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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You have not made any argument.
You are making claims that are completely unsubstantiated presuming they are true, just because you said so: ipse dixit fallacy.
That is an assertion without a proof.
Why do flags serve as a token of loyalty? Because you said so. That's not an argument.
Stating what people do has no bearing on what people ought to do. Effective communication requires interpreting what the author of a message actually meant, not whatever people commonly infer.
This is the main problem with modern communication: people do not care what other people actually meant. I can provide you with a completely different meaning of the rainbow flag that millions of people agree with, but you are going to claim their interpretation is wrong. Why? Because you say so.
I disagree. Here is my argument:
I'm arguing that this is what flags mean to people. Implicit in the above statement is my evidence for it:
None of the above is Ipse Dixit, at least not beyond the tautological sense in which anything I might say is something I have said. I will grant that none of the above evidence is perfect, at least not to the standards of rigorous, committed solipsism. Given that I cannot read minds, I cannot actually be sure that the boringly-consistent data across a lifetime of observing social and political norms is not some elaborate prank being played on me by the rest of the world.
Further, despite the fact that contrary arguments seem facially absurd, I have invited you to offer contrary evidence, or even speculation, on what possible other purpose a flag might serve anyway, because you seem very certain and I'd like to know why.
What people do is at least legible. The problem with claims of what they ought to do is that such claims are not necessarily bounded by reality.
Will I? Why would I do that? Whatever meaning is ascribed, I'm going to argue that it needs to actually account for the common behaviors of those waving the flag. I think my definition above does a pretty good job of that, but I wrote it straight off the dome and would not be terribly surprised if a better encapsulation could be offered. By all means show me how it's done.
More generally, it's not clear to me that most people, or even any people, "know what they mean" themselves. Language is necessarily imprecise at the best of times, and often people speak carelessly, even about things they care deeply about. This is not a retreat to infinite subjectivity, just an acceptance that human minds are complicated, and introspection is difficult.
That's not an argument, that's an assertion.
Evidence is not proof.
What you are doing is literally the black swan fallacy. You assert that all swans are white, then you provide a post hoc rationalization for your assertion: here are some white swans. This is not proof that your assertion is necessarily true.
There's a well known method to solve the black swan fallacy, called falsifiability. Instead of looking for white swans, we should be looking for black swans. In this particular case we should be looking for evidence where people consider a particular flag to be the opposite of what you claim.
If you cared about truth, that's the evidence you should be looking for. But you are doing the opposite of what you should be doing: you are ignoring all the evidence that contradicts your assertion.
Yes, but you have already spelled out exactly how you are going to dismiss it, and on what grounds.
Then why are you arguing that people ought to do these common inferences?
Yes, because you are doing a post hoc rationalization: you are starting from a pre-established conclusion, and selectively choosing the evidence that fits, and rejecting the evidence that doesn't.
So any evidence that contradicts your assertion must be rejected on the basis that it's not "common behavior". So by definition all swans are white, because all the black swans we find are "not common".
So when evidence supports your claim, you treat language as precise; when it doesn't, you appeal to its imprecision. That asymmetry reveals a confirmation bias.
Your assertion is simply unfalsifiable.
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