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felipec  unbelief  1mo ago (felipec.substack.com)   1807 thread views

Freedom of speech has been poisoned and we need to reframe it

felipec.substack.com

I've written about freedom of speech extensively in all manner of forums, but the one thing that has become clear to me lately, is that people are genuinely uninterested in the philosophical underpinnings of freedom of speech. Today they would rather quote an XKCD comic, than John Stuart Mill's seminar work On Liberty.

Because of this, I've decided to try to reframe the original notion of freedom of speech, into a term I coined: Open Ideas.

Open Ideas is nothing more than what freedom of speech has always been historically: a philosophical declaration that the open contestation of ideas is the engine of progress that keeps moving society forward.

Today the tyranny of the majority believes freedom of speech is anything but that. They believe that "freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences", despite the fact that such term came from nowhere, has no author, and in addition all great free speech thinkers argued precisely the opposite. The great thinkers argued that if people are afraid of expressing unpopular opinions, that is functionally the same as government censorship: ideas are suppressed, society stagnates, and progress is halted.

So far I have not yet heard any sound refutation of any of these ideas. All people do is repeat the aforementioned dogmatic slogan with zero philosophical foundation, or mention First Amendment details, which obviously is not equal to freedom of speech.

How is anything I've stated in any way an inaccurate assessment of what is happening?

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I get where you are coming from. Relevant ACX:

“No,” he says. “But you know that saying that’s become popular recently? ‘If there’s a Nazi at the table, and ten people sitting and willingly eating alongside him, then you have 11 Nazis.’”

“Okaaaaay,” you say. “But I’m not a Nazi.”

“You don’t think you’re a Nazi,” he corrected. “But if you take the saying literally, then anybody who’s ever sat down at a table with a Nazi is a Nazi. And anyone who’s ever sat down at a table with them is a Nazi, and anyone who’s ever sat down at a table with them is a Nazi too, and so on. It’s a six degrees of separation problem. When you actually calculate it out, then as long as the average person sits and eats with at least two people during their lifetime, there’s a 99.9998% chance everyone is a Nazi. The only way out is to refuse to ever sit and eat with anyone. Which is what I’m doing.”

This is of course absurd. Failure to adequately punish a behavior is only fractionally as bad as the primary offense. Still, I do not think that it is entirely wrong. Like, if you are posting pictures of yourself hanging out with your buddy who is sporting a swastika tattoo, then I am going to draw conclusions not only about his but also your character. Of course, specifics matter. If you also have buddies who are into Pol Pot, daesh and NAMBLA, I will be more likely to consider you terminally apolitical. If you have made a big deal out of your other buddy wearing a USSR shirt, then I you will go into my mental drawer labeled "likely Nazi-adjacent".

I apply the same heuristic for social media companies. If you only block stuff which you are required to block as a matter of law, that is fine with me. If you block everything slightly offensive to anyone, that is also fine (even though it makes your platform much less useful). If you selectively block stuff, then I will infer your own political leanings from it.

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