
Freedom of Speech: A Right for Everybody, or Only for Like-Minded People? - Reedx
https://heterodoxacademy.org/social-science-freedom-of-speech/
======
DanielBMarkham
From a meta standpoint, it's interesting to me that the most vociferous
deniers of free speech throughout history have made some version of the case
"But they're wrong!" (You can add stupid, evil, whatnot. The point is that
whatever they're saying, it should not be said because it is not correct)

Whereas folks supporting free speech have made the argument: maybe I'm wrong.
I don't know everything, and I've been wrong before. More concisely, looking
back through history a lot of those times we got so upset about people saying
various things, we were wrong. Those people changed all of us for the better.
Unless we continue to humbly think we could continue to be wrong, we stop
evolving. Cue curtain. There's no way to have difficult societal discussions
and fight for the moral and right thing for all of us if we're constantly
going to use current group consensus as a measure of what can be said or not.
That's not progress. That's a popularity contest.

~~~
TulliusCicero
> "But they're wrong!"

I'm pro-free speech, but this is a pretty disingenuous take on the other side.

Pretty much without fail, the argument to restrict speech is not merely, "but
they're wrong!", it's some variant of, "but they're harmful! Their speech is
hurting people!"

And the truth is, quite often they're right. Not in the sense of "people's
feelings are hurt by bad speech", but in the sense of, "this speech openly
displayed encourages X, which is associated with actual, tangible harms to
people". E.g. maybe that one racist dude isn't himself inciting anyone to
violence through his screeds, but he's encouraging sentiment that does lead to
real world violence and other harms.

One of the more understandable restrictions is the ban on Nazi imagery in
Germany. Yes, it's a violation of free speech, but given their history one can
see why they would consider this a special case.

~~~
BurningFrog
You can _always_ construct a credible argument for how any statement is
"encouraging sentiment that does lead to real world violence and other harms".

So with that "exception", you can ban absolutely anything.

~~~
throwawaygh
So, two things:

1\. Your assertion has empirical counter-examples. My favorite example is
Tinker. The dissent in that case already foreshadows exactly your concern,
that the "substantial disruption" test was quite arbitrary. But, in fact,
lower courts were by-and-large extraordinarily friendly toward student speech
when applying the Tinker test. So much so that SCOTUS has had to limit the
scope of Tinker at least a few times in the intervening years (e.g., Hazelwood
and Morse). It's not perfect, but no reasonable person looking at the
historical record can say that the "substantial disruption" exception to free
speech was used to ban "absolutely anything". And "substantial disruption" is
probably the most mild form of harm.

2\. Remember that TulliusCicero isn't arguing against free speech. They're
only pointing out that DanielBMarkham's particular defense of free speech
isn't compelling. I think that's fair. DanielBMarkham's approach toward
defending free speech, which has at its roots in some enlightenment-era ideas
about what man is, really doesn't provide us with a good conceptual framework
for addressing TulliusCicero's critique.

So, although I'm pro-free speech, but I don't think the argument that either
you or DanielBMarkham put forward are particularly compelling.

If you want to defend free speech, you have to honestly deal with the valid
concern that speech really can harm. Insisting that man is a rational animal,
or even that the search for truth will always lead to good outcomes, is...
just not historically compelling.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
You're certainly not using SCOTUS arguments for Enlightenment ideals. I sure
hope not.

My argument was mean in the generic and at an abstract level. I understand
that for some people this is not compelling. Conversely, if were to dive down
into specifics, we would need a somewhat lengthy conversation about where the
guardrails were and where the (hopefully unmovable) goalposts were.

Of course at some level of analysis free speech can cause harm, otherwise
there would be no point in defending it. My admittedly-oversimplified point,
which I have yet to see refuted, is that in the main, we really suck at
predicting the difference between harm and progress. Many times it takes
decades or centuries to sort it out. From there we can end up with the law
being an ass[1] or some finer definition of legitimate public policy choices.
But unless we can all admit that we suck at determining who should speak or
not, we really don't have a basis to continue the conversation, legally or
philosophically.[2]

It's fine to say "Let's start here, and given the current tech, governmental
structures, and laws we live under, where do we go?" It's also fine to say
"What is the purpose of letting people say things that can hurt others,
anyway?" Pick one. I chose the second one. If you'd like to talk about the
first one, that's a completely different conversation. However if you don't
grok the conversation on root principles, it's unlikely any sort of more
complex or nuanced conversation is going to lead you anywhere useful. That has
to be where we all start.

Also, insisting man is a rational animal is yet another can of worms which I
didn't open up. I don't think man is a rational animal at all, and that
doesn't change my opinion or where I think the conversation has to begin.

[1] [https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/the-law-is-an-
ass.html](https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/the-law-is-an-ass.html)

[2] When I say that we suck at determining who should speak or not, I mean in
a moral, ethical, and public policy sense. I do not mean in a legal sense.
Obviously there's a ton of case law around most all of our amendments. I'm
surveying a landscape, not preparing a legal brief.

~~~
throwawaygh
_> You're certainly not using SCOTUS arguments for Enlightenment ideals. I
sure hope not._

Sorry, I'm not sure what that means. The Tinker example was just a
demonstration that, empirically, adding "harm reduction" exceptions to free
speech doesn't always result in arbitrary restrictions on speech. Not for any
profound ultimate reason, but just because that's just not how the herd
dynamics of on particular judiciary worked.

 _> But unless we can all admit that we suck at determining who should speak
or not, we really don't have a basis to continue the conversation, legally or
philosophically._

Okay. But that's a bit of a strawman. I don't see anyone here arguing that
perfect censorship is possible. NB: most people in this thread aren't even
arguing against free speech. We just don't think you're providing a compelling
justification for free speech. Which is different from disagreeing with your
conclusion. But the difference isn't pedantic; it has important down-stream
effects and implications.

 _> insisting man is a rational animal is yet another can of worms which I
didn't open up... I don't think man is a rational animal at all, and that
doesn't change my opinion or where I think the conversation has to begin._

Well, I think my entire point was that you _do_ open that can of worms and
perhaps don't even realize it.

Perhaps you misunderstand what I mean by "rational" here. I don't mean
"perfectly rational" or "good at reasoning" or "not susceptible to
emotion/propaganda" or anything like that. I mean it in a much more basic
"what is that thing that is happening when we think and speak, regardless of
any consideration of truth or correctness or progress or any of that" sense.

To keep things concise and specific, the following sentences exemplify the
thing I find philosophically suspect in the way you think about free speech:

\- _" a lot of those times we got so upset about people saying various things,
we were wrong. Those people changed all of us for the better."_

\- _" we really suck at predicting the difference between harm and progress."_

\- _" Unless we continue to humbly think we could continue to be wrong, we
stop evolving."_

I disagree that these propositions are even particularly meaningful.

To be clear and to avoid a tangent, it's _not_ that I disagree because I think
the opposite. I.e., I disagree equally and in the exact same way with the
statement "we are good at predicting the difference between harm and
progress".

My disagreement is at a fundamental and philosophical level. In the sense that
I think there's a bunch of incorrect stuff we have to assume about the role
that rationality plays in human thought and human language (and, therefore,
human politics) in order for a discussion about _any_ of these propositions to
_even make sense_.

Perhaps this will help get the point across: when I say "you think man is a
rational animal", what I really mean is that you have a very specific type of
answer you're going to give to the question: "what is the reason that it
doesn't occur to us to use any of the quotes I listed above to talk about deer
or bears or whales?" And your answer to that question is simply not the answer
I would give.

(NB, to avoid a tangent, it's the _reason_ those sentences have meaning for
humans and not other animals -- not _whether_ they have meaning for one and
not the other -- that is the thing that I think we disagree on at some sort of
fundamental philosophical level.)

You see enlightened subjects coming to belief (perhaps false or perhaps true)
through the use of cognition (perhaps logical or perhaps emotional; perhaps
sound logic or perhaps bad logic; perhaps positive emotion or perhaps negative
emotion).

I see a herd of animals acted upon by emergent social phenomenon over which no
one of the herd has particularly much control.

When I think about the reason for free speech, I think about herd dynamics and
the importance (or not) of entropy. When you think about the reason for free
speech, you think about individuals reasoning and the limits (or not) of
rationality. Of course both of us see shades of each, I'm just much more to
one side of that continuum and you're much more to the other side.

------
motohagiography
There are topics we can reason abstractly about well, and topics we cannot. I
find when people get to the edge of their abilities in a topic, we tend to
fall back on moralizing and personalizing it. The author's link between
cognitive ability and liberality towards speech I think can be explained by
how cognitive ability is the capability to think abstractly about things using
properties and categories, and not explained using the implication that
believing in certain rights is a proxy for smart.

The speech and tolerance question is hyper-personalized because the tools for
reasoning abstractly about it have a steep learning curve. Some of the most
educated people I know hold objectively extreme political views because I
think it's something they don't really consider in the abstract, and
expressing those views is a sympathetic outlet for other personalized
anxieties. Ultimately I think political discussion is something they engage in
for excitement and entertainment, and so they aren't held to the same level of
intellectual rigor in it as they are in their chosen fields of expertise.
Extreme views become a kind of vice or indulgence because it's exciting to be
outraged and engage in recreational conflict - especially when it has no
bearing on their real expertise.

I'd argue what we may think about freedom of speech doesn't actually matter,
as public discourse is no longer about ideas, principle or reason, it's just a
power struggle. One that otherwise smart people seem to participate in as
intellectual tourists without much thought as to what their impact actually is
because it's exciting.

~~~
koheripbal
I think this hits the nail right on the head, but I think there is more...

The point at which theoretical political dogma transition from a recreational
debate into a something an intelligent person might feel uncomfortably
obligated to place more thought into, is when there are real personal impacts
on them.

Everyone can talk about universal healthcare as an intellectual concept, but
it's not until they finally have the experience in a socialized hospital that
they might take the time to wonder about the real merits of a single-payer
system (this is a random example - don't get hung up on it).

This problem is then amplified by two recent phenomena...

1\. The drastic decrease in age of the average political participant. With
Reddit as an example, the average age of Reddit users has dropped nearly 1
year for every year over the last ten years. Presumably, Twitter has seen the
same demographic shift. This means these politically active users have less
education to fall back on, and approach these subjects with more emotion. That
leads to more insults and less constructive arguments, and a general
intolerance of opposition.

2\. International participation. There is a drastic increase in US social
media platforms from non-US participants. For those people, the debates are
_pure_ recreational debates as they will never see the consequences of any
systemic changes. They have no skin in the game, so the most radical options
always seem more appealing.

...and of course there is also _intentional_ foreign influence campaigns to
polarize online discussions.

I think the way out is to rethink how social media is structured. It's causing
some very systemic issues.

------
AlexMax
So I've been sitting in this comment thread for a while and something has been
bothering me. I'm noticing two things that are consistently brought up:

1\. Free speech as some sort of abstract enlightenment ideal.

2\. Cases of clear injustice in our past that stemmed from denial of free
speech.

But that's not really why this article was posted, was it? It's really part of
the ongoing modern conversations we're having around certain groups claiming
their free speech rights are being infringed.

I think that injustice was done to Galileo, but I'm not going to shed a tear
for somebody who was booted from an internet community for arguing that
certain races have a lower IQ and LGBT+ folk are degenerates that need to be
sterilized, even if they do it in a faux-earnest way.

~~~
dependenttypes
> for somebody who was booted from an internet community for arguing that
> certain races have a lower IQ and LGBT+ folk are degenerates that need to be
> sterilized

Usually this is not why people are booted off from platforms but rather
because they do not follow a specific rhetoric or because somebody claims that
they said X while they actually said Y. See the recent stallman case for
example. I was actually censored from a certain platform for defending
stallman's right to express what he thinks regarding pedophilia.

> for arguing that certain races have a lower IQ

Is this not a science related-debate? If anything this (in general things
related to science) is the kind of speech that should be protected the most.

~~~
thephyber
> Usually this is not why people are booted off from platforms

As someone who worked on a social media platform (large, but not one of the
largest), I got to see the evidence that admins and moderators used to make
their judgements (which they aren't given much time to do) and frequently the
banned user mischaracterizes their actual behavior (both current and previous)
and has an incomplete understanding of what the ToS says or the implications
of the literal ToS text.

I don't know about Stallman or more academic exercises, but the average person
arguing on social media is very likely to go over the threshold of acceptable
behavior and may not even know what the threshold for which social media
companies are required to report content to police.

The best thing platforms can do to mitigate some of these issues is to give
public explanations of their ToS as the moderators are taught to interpret
them (basically reduce the information loss from the ToS legalese) and to give
moderators more freedom to explain exactly what behavior violated exactly what
part of the ToS (reducing some of the confusion from ambiguity).

------
MattGaiser
My self-check on restricting freedoms is whether I would let someone I
ardently oppose have the same power.

~~~
hackissimo123
This times a million.

"If you invent a weapon, eventually your enemies will have it."

------
jungletime
Is it ever a good idea to tell someone the worst things about them? I would
say maybe, depends on the context, because talking is always preferable to
violence. But there does come a point, when talking is just used to organize
violence. So clearly there is a line.

"Tutsi were increasingly viewed with suspicion; Radio Rwanda aired incitement
to ethnic hatred and a pogrom was organised on 11 October in a commune in
Gisenyi Province, killing 383 Tutsi."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan_Civil_War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan_Civil_War)

~~~
jhhh
Inciting imminent lawless action is not covered under the first amendment.

~~~
thephyber
> So clearly there is a line.

So you agree with your parent.

> is not covered under the first amendment

The 1A doesn't explicitly define its limited uses, but thru jurisprudence,
courts have ruled that the 1A only protects American persons within the USA
and that it's not an absolute protection, but can be infringed / withdrawn /
overridden if it violates the rights of others or the national security
interests of the country.

------
jimbob45
The two dead comments below are right. The premise of the article is that
people who scored higher on IQ tests tended to be more likely to support free
speech. That’s got to be the laziest argument I’ve ever seen.

~~~
daenz
It wasn't even an IQ test. According to the paper, they gave participants 10
words, with each word being presented with 5 other words. They were instructed
to match each of the 10 target words with the closest of the 5 words. The
claim is that vocabulary knowledge is highly correlated with general
intelligence, and so this simple test is a proxy for cognitive ability.

------
CoolGuySteve
"Now that the show is over, and we have jointly exercised our constitutional
rights, we would like to leave you with one very important thought: Some time
in the future, you may have the opportunity to serve as a juror in a so-called
obscenity case. It would be wise to remember that the same people who would
stop you from viewing an adult film may be back next year to complain about a
book, or even a TV program. If you can be told what you can see or read, then
it follows that you can be told what to say or think. Defend your
constitutionally protected rights - no one else will do it for you. Thank
you."

~~~
imustbeevil
A website owner's right to choose what to publish is a _more important
application_ of the first amendment than anyone else's right to force you to
publish their speech.

If you disagree, I command you to post this post on _your_ twitter. If you
don't, you're censoring me.

~~~
nitrogen
This argument has been made back and forth many many times. Private property
rights vs. privatization of public spaces. Quantity becoming quality. Etc.

Surfice to say that when a corporation controls more "territory" than most
state governments, when a very small number of corporations control the vast,
_vast_ majority of communication channels, the rules must change to maintain
the access of the people to the new public square.

~~~
vharuck
It's trying to solve the wrong problem. If there's a monopoly, it should be
busted. Not declared a new government agency.

~~~
ufmace
IMO, the problem is that some fields are natural monopolies. This has long
been known to include things like electric utilities, water, etc. I don't
think anybody but the most crazy extreme libertarians objects to these types
of companies being heavily regulated by the Government. The question is,
should this apply to internet companies, and how?

It is a bit tricky. I think there is a solid case that, once social networking
companies get to a certain size, there is a dominating network effect that
makes them sort of like natural monopolies. Thus I think there should be some
kind of regulation of their behavior. Maybe not as strict as other types of
natural monopolies, but I think they have too much power to be allowed to just
do whatever their owners feel like.

~~~
Natsu
One way to solve this would be to regulate only the largest platforms. So
maybe this different kind of net neutrality only applies to
Twitter/Facebook/YouTube, domain registrars, ISPs, large cloud providers and
other significant privately-owned infrastructure, but not to every random bit
player with no real market share.

Otherwise, what happens if the ISPs decide that, say, Net Neutrality cuts into
their profit margins, so they're just not going to route traffic for the sites
that are politically antagonistic to them right before the election?

Sure would be a shame if something happened to that site of yours, huh?

------
throwaway_jobs
I wish people would take the time to read 1st Amendment case law.

I think people would be shocked, even when the court get it wrong, the
justices and opinions explore the subject in a depth that laymen will go their
entire lives never exploring or understanding. Plus the bonus of it being
maybe one of the more interesting areas of law factually.

Some of the major topics I suggest looking at/googling:

-1st amendment restricts the government from infringing speech Not private parties (I.e. you say something about my wife/kids I can shut your mouth, maybe I will face criminal/civil penalties for damaging your face, but not for chilling your speech)

-the marketplace of ideas (perhaps my favorite concept in free speech)

-government can restrict Speech based on time/location (i.e. require permits for using public spaces or limiting your access to public space such as closing a park at night and arresting you for trespassing preventing you from distributing your speech when/where you want)

-“Fuck the draft” (just lol) vs burning draft cards

-obscene speech (porn - Imagine the justices Getting together with their popcorn and watching porn together...they still can’t define it, “but they know it when they see it”)...this extends to child porn too

I’ll leave it there, have fun!

~~~
koheripbal
Free Speech != 1st Amendment.

Free Speech is a _principle_ that allowing opposing viewpoints is the
cornerstone of political discourse and a functioning democracy. Only through
discussion, debate, and argument, do we avoid what all governments are
designed to avoid - violence.

The 1st Amendment is a Law that is meant to protect the people from
restrictions on freedom of speech from the government. It if not the totality
of the idea.

In the same way that the government regulations on clothing imports are not a
national dress code.

The dangerous territory we have recently waded into is that the younger voters
are so emotionally tied to their political ideas within their bubble that they
cannot stand to hear discussions that do not agree with their existing world
view - and are happy to see violence used to silence dissent.

It is the _principle_ of Freedom of Speech that is under attack - not the 1st
Amendment.

~~~
throwaway_jobs
Well of course in addition to free speech the 1st amendment includes other
rights such as freedom of religion (Separation of church and state), freedom
of the press, right to assemble and right to petition the government for
grievances. In its plain wording “the government shall make no
law...prohibiting free speech...” but people get hung up on that when we know
government can in fact pass all sorts of laws that limit free speech and in my
experience I can get even the most die hard “absolutists” To agree certain
speech should be illegal (this typically stems from the fact people don’t
understand what “speech” is from a legal context).

I stand by what I said, people should read the case law.

While you say the danger is young people being emotional in their bubble, I
think you will find every generation says something similar about the next
generation.

Why I encourage people to read the case law is because it provides historical
context for these rights and how the law is actually applied. I think one of
the biggest dangers, is failure to educate ourselves especially learn our own
history (history of our laws or otherwise). The point of studying history is
so we can hopefully avoid the mistakes of our past...yet as history suggests
we will continue to neglect history and make the exact same mistakes.

------
fomojola
You can say whatever you want: you should also expect to take heat from non-
like minded people. At some point the free speech concept transitioned to "I
should be able to say whatever I want with no consequences". The First
Amendment is very specific:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or
prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or
of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to
petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Says nothing about any one else's responses to your words.

~~~
kerkeslager
Free speech is important even in contexts where the First Amendment doesn't
apply. The First Amendment is important because free speech is important, not
the other way around.

I agree with this:

    
    
        You can say whatever you want: you should also expect
        to take heat from non-like minded people.
    

But I think this misrepresents the view of free speech advocates (it certainly
misrepresents my viewpoint):

    
    
        At some point the free speech concept transitioned to
        "I should be able to say whatever I want with no
        consequences".
    

On the contrary, I think a lot of left-authoritarians who want to censor
right-leaning speech are the ones touting this viewpoint. It's not the pro-
free-speech crowd that wants no consequences for what they say, it's the anti-
free-speech crowd. One of the consequences of stating your opinion publicly is
that people will disagree with you.

------
hkt
The problem people have with free speech is the way it is used to legitimise
bad behaviour. Creating a hostile environment for people - questioning their
equality and validity - is not a reasonable moral choice. Being ostracised for
one's awful choices isn't unfair or unexpected, or indeed unprecedented. Most
people complaining about free speech are essentially campaigning for their
right to be cruel and impolite in polite society.

~~~
kerkeslager
That's a total mischaracterization of people who believe in free speech.

I don't think people should say bigoted things. But more importantly, I don't
think people should _think_ bigoted things.

If you shame and ostracize people into not _saying_ bigoted things, but you
don't solve the _thinking_ bigoted things problem, then all you've done is
hide the problem, and you're suddenly surprised when a bigot gets elected to
the White House or a bigoted police officer murders someone and gets away with
it (again). Censored bigots don't magically stop being bigots--they just go
form their own communities.

The way you get people to stop _thinking_ bigoted things is not by silencing
it, it's by explaining to people why they're wrong. Even if you don't change
the mind of the bigot you're talking to, you might change the mind of someone
else who is listening to or reading what you say.

I'm not campaigning for people's right to be cruel and impolite. I'm
campaigning for conversation that brings the truth to light and improves our
collective thinking.

And to be clear, I'm also not saying that free speech means you should have no
consequences in any context. If you say something racist at work you should
absolutely be fired. I'm saying that we need places where people can say
racist things so that those racist things can be confronted with the truth.

~~~
UncleMeat
> If you shame and ostracize people into not saying bigoted things, but you
> don't solve the thinking bigoted things problem, then all you've done is
> hide the problem

This is not true. It does not solve that person thinking bigoted things, but
it does help prevent them from turning other people into bigots. A huge number
of people have fallen into terrible thought patterns after being exposed to
these ideas through youtubers and faux academics. If there are fewer people
with PhDs after their name willing to lend a veneer of legitimacy to defeated
ideas then there will be fewer people drawn into the trap.

~~~
dependenttypes
> but it does help prevent them from turning other people into bigots

This is the same as saying "I can't logically defeat their points so I will
use underhanded censorship tricks". I would not care so much if it was only
about actually bigoted things but it seems to include everything that goes
against what the average SV google engineer believes.

At the same time you are punishing these that are interested in seeing what
the censored side thinks as well as the points against it.

~~~
UncleMeat
> "I can't logically defeat their points so I will use underhanded censorship
> tricks"

You _can 't_ logically defeat bigots in a way that actually matters to them.
If this were the case, then there wouldn't be bigots. The existence of
systemic racism is not controversial among experts and hasn't been for a long
time. Yet people insist on arguing about it forever. They don't care that
logical arguments dismantle their beliefs.

Because it is a trick. It is a denial of service attack.

~~~
kerkeslager
> You can't logically defeat bigots in a way that actually matters to them.

The goal of public debate is never to persuade the person you're debating,
it's to persuade those watching the debate. Sometimes you can persuade the
person you're talking to, but that take a lot more sophisticated understanding
of the other person than you're going to achieve if you simply dismiss them as
illogical.

> If this were the case, then there wouldn't be bigots.

That simply doesn't follow. Bigots _do_ change their minds sometimes, slowly
over time.

> The existence of systemic racism is not controversial among experts and
> hasn't been for a long time. Yet people insist on arguing about it forever.
> They don't care that logical arguments dismantle their beliefs.

It's not that they don't care, it's that they don't agree that they are
logical.

Keep in mind, also, that logic is only as good as the evidence you feed into
it. Logic in a vacuum of evidence is completely useless. People don't always
change, but they do sometimes change.

Also, keep in mind that censorship isn't the only poor strategy the left is
employing here. Sure, getting rid of censorship and just arguing with people
won't fix things, but that's in part because the argumentation of the left is
crap too. The cry of many people on the left these days is, "Come to the left,
we'll call you a racist!" and they're surprised when this actually pushes
people _to the right_. People think minds can't be changed because they've
never actually learned how to change minds.

The truth has power. If you want people to stop supporting cops, for example:
show them this video[1] and then point out that the murderer in that video now
receives $2500/month in medical pension because he claims PTSD from the murder
he committed. Try it out! It's not hard to science this for yourself.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBUUx0jUKxc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBUUx0jUKxc)

~~~
UncleMeat
> The goal of public debate is never to persuade the person you're debating,
> it's to persuade those watching the debate. Sometimes you can persuade the
> person you're talking to, but that take a lot more sophisticated
> understanding of the other person than you're going to achieve if you simply
> dismiss them as illogical.

Debate is not the only mechanism to do this. Why invite a bigot on stage?
Wouldn't a better option be to have academics give lectures on the topic? What
use is there to have somebody sitting next to them interjecting?

~~~
kerkeslager
A staged debate is a curated event. There might be strategic reasons to invite
a bigot on stage, but you're certainly not obligated to--in general I think
putting reasonable voices next to ignorant ones gives an air of legitimacy to
ignorance and drags down the reputation of both the reasonable voices and the
curators. So yeah, don't invite a bigot on stage.

Curation is not the same as censorship. Curation is a whitelist where by
default you don't let anyone speak, and choose specific people to give voice
to--the choice of who to give voice to is in itself an act of free speech
which I think should be protected. Newspapers, TV news, staged debates, etc.
are all curated venues. I absolutely support boycotting Fox News and its
sponsors, for example, because they're a curated venue which has decided that
bigotry is the message they want to put out into the world. If the Mother
Jones or ProPublica started hiring bigots to write their articles, I'd support
boycotting them too--these are curated news sources and I donate to them
because I expect them to limit their content to quality content.

A curated venue is different from a communications platform where the default
position is to let everyone speak. Letting someone speak on a communications
platform doesn't lend legitimacy to their opinions: everyone knows that any
idiot can post on Facebook. Censorship is adding a blacklist: the default
position is anyone can speak, but you've decided to make an exception to that
rule.

The topic of this subthread isn't curated debate in curated venues, it's
censorship of debate on social media.

If you want to argue that Facebook/Twitter/Reddit/Instagram/YouTube/HN should
be curated venues where only academics are allowed to post on topics they are
experts in, then start by showing me which credentials you feel qualify you to
debate about human rights. If you actually believe what you're saying, then
follow it to its logical conclusion and self-censor.

To be clear, I'm _not_ actually saying you should self-censor--I don't believe
that social media should be limited to academics. I'm merely pointing out that
you aren't following your own principles.

------
duxup
>The series of studies suggest that cognitive ability is related to support
for freedom of speech for groups across the ideological spectrum.

It's an interesting result and I have a lot of questions that I think are
mostly because I don't understand how studies like this work, but that's kinda
a laundry list to throw at a short article like this ;)

I do wonder if put to the test if those conclusions hold up. Introduce fear,
or just personal interests and does that support go out the window?

I suspect that there might be a difference from general support for freedom of
speech... and a willingness to also support some contradictory policies /
points of view at the same time when fear, or personal interest are at play.

History is full of ideology turned to something else entirely.

Granted I don't know how you'd test that reliably in any way.

~~~
staplers

      I do wonder ... Introduce fear, or just personal interests and does that support go out the window?
    

Anecdotally, my view of 2A rights completely flipped once I saw police
attacking people in their homes and property for no other reason than filming
protests.

I used to (naively) think the police and government were generally passive to
citizens even when politically differing. It's amazing how quickly the
illusion can be shattered.

~~~
JoeSmithson
What's the logic here? How does police brutality and 2A relate?

Police are aggressive and corrupt, so you get a gun, so...?

~~~
staplers
Why do the police carry weapons when violent criminals are aggressive and
corrupt?

------
RegnisGnaw
The simple truth is that most people like "free speech" as long as they agree
with it.

------
HissingMachine
I would find interesting if someone conducted a study, where they asked if the
participant supports freedom of speech for various categories and their
perceived ability to argue pro and con in that category, if it was possible to
test their argumentation ability in said categories it would be also
insightful. Mostly I suspect that while people hold strong beliefs, they don't
have a deep enough understanding of it to rationalize why and argue if someone
disagrees with them. In addition it would be interesting to know the
participants readiness to enter an argument if they support the freedom of
speech in each category.

------
mcguire
" _Cognitive Ability Is Related to Supporting Freedom of Speech for Groups
Across the Ideological Spectrum_ "

I don't have access to the paper. How do they define "cognitive ability"?

------
seph-reed
Ethos, pathos, logos :: social credit, intuition, logic. Each a very
reasonable means of surviving, but ethos is by far the strongest. If you fit
in which a bunch of things that aren't dead, you'll probably not die.
Something about this play-style seems to result in more than just fitting in,
but also hating those who don't. If freedom of speech is your ability to say
divergent things, being hated for being different is a problem.

------
jheitmann
The speech that should absolutely be abridged is using the phrase "Freedom of
Speech: A Right" seemingly without referring to the U.S. constitutional right,
and also without defining what you mean otherwise. The penalty for violating
this law shall be that you have to read every single forum comment about your
abstract.

~~~
kerkeslager
Communication is not a one-person activity--some of the burden of
communication lies on the listener/reader/etc. If you have questions about
what someone means, ask them. It's unrealistic to demand that people somehow
foresee your questions and answer them without you having to ask.

------
mdoms
The contents of the article has nothing in common with the title.

------
andrewprock
I'm not sure heterodox academy is worth the paper it is printed on.

The article itself attempts to make some kind of vague argument about
cognitive ability and social positions. Any time a blogger trots out cognitive
ability as one of their primary evidentiary threads, you can be fairly certain
that the rest of what you read will largely consist of confirmation bias from
the privileged class.

~~~
nabilhat
Just this morning I was thinking about the increasing volume of propaganda,
trolling, and heterodox/'edgy' I've been seeing on HN in the last couple of
months. Now here we are with a piece suggesting that cognitive superiority or
inferiority relates to subjects like "homosexuals", "communists", "anti-
american Muslim clergy", and it's on the front page.

------
Vysero
Imo, it's an unalienable right for everybody, but that doesn't mean cancel
culture won't #$(% on you for speaking your belief. However, sometimes you
have to say what you believe in even if you know you are going to be shamed
for it. Perhaps this would be a good time for us all to go re-read The Scarlet
Letter, eh?

~~~
isbjorn16
Ugh. Can we stop with the cancel culture narrative? When people say
objectionable things, there may be consequences. This unhinged proposition
that you should have an invincibility force field around you when you spit out
obnoxious shit is absurd.

If you say something people don't like, they may want nothing to do with you.
They may want nothing to do with people associated with you. Those people may
be your employer. Your employer may not agree with the stuff you say AND
you're harming them. Thus, your relationship is terminated.

Nobody is being victimized here. Everyone's rights are being upheld and
maintained. If my employer hated this comment enough to fire me, then onward I
go to another employer, or onward to destitution. If I'm not confident that
what I say is mainstream enough that I could be fired for it, then I shouldn't
say it, or I should accept that I'm not mainstream enough and thus can't
attempt to live in mainstream society.

Arguments against "cancel culture" fundamentally mean that people should be
forced to have a relationship with me they may not want even if I'm an
objectionable, reprehensible twat, and that's too bad for them, because my
position is somehow more important than their right to freely associate. I
reject this utterly.

~~~
steve_g
I reject your rejection.

Cancel culture is terrible because the goal is to destroy people who hold
unpopular beliefs. It not enough to refute the belief. The transgressor must
be punished with the full fury that internet-enhanced social pressure can
bring to bear. The goal is to punish and destroy.

Shaming and social opprobrium can work in a community where there's
interaction between the parties. This also allows for grace and restoration.
It doesn't work in the global twitter-verse.

Civilization is the ability to live in peace with people that aren't like you
- you may disagree with them, disapprove of them, or dislike them, but you
don't seek to destroy them. We seem to be losing it.

~~~
isbjorn16
Destroy, or show there are ramifications for speech?

I find the "I can say whatever I want, it's just words" to be an immature
stance to hold. Words hold power, and power can be used or misused. We know
words hold power; otherwise protesting wouldn't work, MLK's letters from a
birmingham jail wouldn't matter, even the very constitution itself would be
pointless.

So if that power is being applied to harm people, there needs to be a check on
that. I fully agree it isn't the government's role to play that part; it's
society's full, universal, democratic decision what to do with it.

The final result is "if you say something so upsetting that you can get a
large group of people to use their own words and freedom to associate to harm
you in return, then that's on you". If you don't like the worst that the so-
called "cancel culture" response can bring you, then the solution is
relatively simple: choose your words carefully and _own them_.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
> it's society's full, universal, democratic decision what to do with it.

That might be fine, if that were the way it worked. In practice, though, it
seems more that it's a minority forming a howling mob that brings the heat.

> "if you say something so upsetting that you can get a large group of people
> to use their own words and freedom to associate to harm you in return, then
> that's on you"

I prefer the legal system to mob "justice".

------
ditonal
In 2020, free speech is most often attacked under three false premises:

1\. "It's a private company, they can deplatform whoever they want!"

This is obviously true to an extent, but as all communication is increasingly
dominated by a few private companies, leads to a situation where free speech
is effectively stifled not by the government but by an oligarchy. This is
especially true since internet infrastructure like DNS is implemented by
private companies.

2\. "It's freedom of speech, not freedom of consequences of speech!"

Clearly this argument is absurd and wrong, yet I've seen it get touted
nonetheless, notably in an XKCD comic. If the government threw you in jail for
political speech, and defined that as "allowing free speech but simply having
consequences of that speech", most would agree that's not true free speech.
Yet people accept that flawed logic in other contexts.

If you can lose your livelihood for a political opinion, you don't really have
free speech, yet that's increasingly the precedent set by Silicon Valley as a
reasonable consequence of unpopular political opinions.

3\. "We can't be tolerant of intolerant opinions!"

Again, perhaps some truth here in the most extreme cases, yet increasingly we
label all but the most anondyne opinions as intolerant. The range of
acceptable opinions gets narrower every day, and the consequences for
diverging from it increasingly harsh.

To me it's an objective reality that there's a massive attack on free speech
in 2020, especially in places like Silicon Valley and primarily by people who
identify as "the left", usually using the fallacious arguments noted above.

~~~
fzeroracer
> If you can lose your livelihood for a political opinion, you don't really
> have free speech, yet that's increasingly the precedent set by Silicon
> Valley as a reasonable consequence of unpopular political opinions.

A hypothetical for you. Let's say you're married to someone. That someone
later down the line turns into a massive jerk, frequently spouting obscenities
at you and has changed politically. If you divorce them, are you violating
their right to freedom of speech? Should we as a society not allow divorces
lest they censor someone's opinion?

~~~
SpicyLemonZest
I have no issue with people being fired or divorced for spouting obscenities.
I would certainly think poorly of someone who filed for divorce because their
spouse changed politically.

------
hirundo
Alternative causality chain:

1\. The more politically powerless you feel, the more you support free speech
in order to protect speech you agree with.

2\. More intelligent people are more likely to land in less politically
powerful ideologies, just due to exploring more of them.

The graph showing that "Communist" most favor free speech and "Military"
supports it least seems to be consistent with a political power gradient.

A prediction of this explanation: As power shifts, e.g. as leftists come to
dominate academia, the group gaining power will tend to favor free speech
less, and visa versa.

~~~
ivalm
Totally agree, in many academic settings this is already a thing (and I say it
as a social democrat!).

------
GenerocUsername
Free speech will and always will be about not taxing speech. The government
has no right to tax speech.

------
EGreg
WHAT EXACTLY IS FREEDOM OF SPEECH?

My view on freedom of speech is different from most I found, but I think it’s
the one that is consistent and stays true to actual definitions of words.

Human freedoms are about what the human can do. Right to bear arms. Right to
speak. Right to assemble. And so on. That is how the Bill of Rights seems to
intend it.

Note that the freedom to physically say anything and not get carted away is
_different_ than that of an organization.

Corporations may be “persons” for the purpose of suing and being sued in court
etc. But when it comes to freedom of speech, it is quite another level of
indirection!

When Sinclair TV buys a bunch of local stations, and makes them say something,
they are not really free. They are saying whatever they are being told to say:

[https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-
way/2018/04/02/598794433...](https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-
way/2018/04/02/598794433/video-reveals-power-of-sinclair-as-local-news-
anchors-recite-script-in-unison)

But here is the proper description: freedom of speech is different than
_access to a megaphone that an organization with a large audience gives you_.

And I prefer that our news and announcements would be run more like Wikipedia
than FOX, CNN or even Twitter. Because the latter tear apart our society. News
outlets were disrutped by the Internet so they adjusted by locking in an
audience by choosing a side and publishing clickbait. And social media in
their race to the bottom for advertising dollars herded us into echo chanbers
around this content. The current political fever pitch is NOT an accident or a
plan by any one person. What can we do instead? Run it like Wikipedia.

Think of concentric circles. The smallest circle is what certain groups of
mutually distrusting / disagreeing experts / pundits discussing things. They
are the ones to go and publish dissenting opinions. This is analogous to the
Talk page on Wikipedia.

This circle of people get a notification every time that one of them posts, so
they can add their 2 cents.

Then once enough of them have weighed in, the next level is opened up — which
is either the public or an intermediate circle of fact-checkers or news
organizations.

I do not think the public should get stuff unfiltered from the megaphone of
anyone with a Twitter audience of 50,000 or a podcas audience of 40,000. Sure,
we are not used to this kind of society, but it is NOT a FREEDOM of speech
issue. It is an issue of access to megaphones.

The current understanding of “freedom of speech” leads to contradictions and
idiosynchrasies where one side claims that Facebook, Twitter are private
platforms and aren’t covered under the Bill of Rights, while another side says
that they are larger than many countries and are directly distributing speech
on their platform. Whether these are “online countries” or not and whether
they are subject to the US Bill of Rights because they are located here or
operate here is up for debate. But under my definition the forced
restructuring of how information is disseminated to wider and wider audiences
wouldn’t be a Freedom of Speech issue.

PS: By the way, what I described is how news desks used to be run, with
various editors being involved before things went to press.

~~~
hirundo
1A: "Congress shall make no law ... prohibiting the freedom of speech, or of
the press;"

EGreg: "it is NOT a FREEDOM of speech issue. It is an issue of access to
megaphones."

Are you saying that the "freedom of speech" part is a good idea, but "freedom
of the press", phrased as a "access to megaphones", is the problem?

~~~
intopieces
The freedom of the press is the right of like minded people to print what they
want (barring slander and libel). It is not a requirement that those like
minded people print content they object to.

------
daenz
Interesting and totally tone-deaf timing for this article, given the current
climate of the world ("Post a black square on your social media or you are
committing violence with your silence.")

------
contrapunter
Speech isn't free. It's a form of action and actions are constrained. As the
West changes from a Christian to a post-Christian culture, one set of
blasphemy laws are being replaced by another set. One set of words you can't
say in public by another.

Thoughts, on the other hand, are _sometimes_ free. That's one reason the
promulgation of despair is continually attempted: to shut down free thought.

------
ulucs
The funny thing is, the shift of accepting the existence "unacceptable" speech
hurts liberal speech more than conservative speech (I looked at the numbers
from [https://www.niskanencenter.org/there-is-no-campus-free-
speec...](https://www.niskanencenter.org/there-is-no-campus-free-speech-
crisis-a-close-look-at-the-evidence/)). Considering how people chasing
cancellings on twitter tend to hold extreme opinions themselves, they actively
contribute to the thinning of the ice they're walking on.

