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Notes -
Huge news from South America today.
A single judge in Brazil has not only blocked X in the country, but is requiring Apple and Google to remove VPNs from their phones, and is imposing a $9,000 daily fine (basically a year's salary) for anyone in the country caught using a VPN.
Elon Musk attracted the ire of this particular judge, Alexandre de Moraes, when he posted about the judge's previous autocratic attempts to silence free speech and to jail opponents of the current regime led by Lula da Silva. The legal system is very strange in Brazil, and apparently Supreme Court judges have huge unilateral powers to try cases and enforce laws as they see fit. This particular judge has done so thousands of times.
Now X is banned.
With dissent being silenced, and a corrupt socialist in charge, it seems that yet another Latin American country is set on the path to tyranny.
Many people will be opposed to this move on Brazil's part, but for the wrong reasons, chief among which is national pride. As a free speech absolutist, I'm opposed to this move because I believe any speech whatsoever should be legally permitted. This includes not just "wholesome" speech, but:
The justification is simple: sticks and stones may break your bones but words can never hurt you. To which the standard reply is: "but words can hurt too". To which my reply is: "no it can't, because to hurt is to cause pain, and pain is purely a physical sensation. There is no such thing as non-physical pain, the kind people talk about when they talk about e.g. losing someone they love. That talk of 'pain' is merely a figure of speech. ". To which the reply may be: "but phantom limb pain is non-physical". To which the reply is: "no it's physical in my sense. For pain to be physical it's not necessary that it's triggered by a physical stimulus. It suffices that it's experienced as physical, i.e. it has the distinctive qualia associated with pain and is locatable in some specific part of the body or a generic region of the body. And phantom limb pain meets those conditions."
Okay, but do you believe the opposite of this is true as well?
"Bricks and stones may make our homes, but words will never help me."
Usually, people justify free speech not just on the fact that speech doesn't do harm, but because free speech produces some tangible good in the world through the sharing of information.
But if you don't believe words can cause pain, do you also believe that words cannot produce the opposite of pain - pleasure?
Because if words can't affect bodily pain or pleasure for better or worse in your view, wouldn't it be the same whether the government banned speech or allowed it?
But if words can cause pleasure/produce benefits, then how can you maintain that they cannot ever produce harms?
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