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?
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
No. I believe Open Ideas / Freedom of speech applies to interpersonal relationships as well.
But the reason why you decide to distance yourself from a person matters. If the reason why you personally decided to distance yourself is because you personally find some of his/her views detestable, that's a personal choice. But if the reason is that the tyranny of the majority has decreed that's what everyone should do, that's entirely different.
The key factor is not whether or not you distance yourself. It's what are the consequences for society.
If you make your decision based on personal criteria, it's likely there will be no repercussions to society. But you make it based on societal decrees, it's very likely that other people would do the same, and that would almost certainly blow back on society.
So basically if a social ostracism decision has a potential to affect society, freedom of speech has something to say about it.
This sounds a lot like "any snow flake is free to slide down the mountain, it is the avalanches that are the problem".
Suppose there is a baker who runs an "Aryan Bakery" with a swastika in the logo, which is something which is very permissible from a freedom of speech point of view.
A lot of potential customers would make the personal choice not to do business with him, because they find Nazis repugnant. Most of these people would probably also unfriend anyone whom they saw using a branded bag from that place, which admittedly is a more concerning indirect effect, but imho still fair.
Overton windows are a feature of basically all societies. Liberal societies generally limit the repercussions for speech acts, e.g. they will mostly not put you in jail for speech unless you are directly inciting violence. But unless you are already on the outermost edges of society, it is likely that speech acts outside the Overton window will have some repercussions for you.
This is not always ideal. I am sure that there are good ideas whose adoption took and continues to take longer because most people who had them knew that they were icky ideas, and a significant fraction of their society would consider them a bad person if they voiced them publicly. Atheism, gay rights and embryo selection would all be such examples, from where I stand.
Still, this is unavoidable. There are a lot of sellers in the marketplace of ideas, so that no person can carefully examine all the ideas every vendor has on offer. So people need some heuristics. And one such heuristic is "if someone promotes what seems to be a terrible idea, you should adjust your estimate of their average idea quality downwards."
Snow flakes are not susceptible to social contagion.
By making that claim you are proving my point.
An Aryan Bakery has nothing to do with Open Ideas, because there's no idea being expressed or defended.
Therefore it has nothing to do with the reasoning behind freedom of speech, which was all about ideas that could potentially benefit society.
The fact that you believe an Aryan Bakery has anything to do with actual freedom of speech shows the need for Open Ideas.
An avalanche seems very similar to to a social contagion that snowflakes are susceptible to, if we're accepting metaphors in the first place.
"Swastikas are cool" isn't an idea? "I stand with the people who use the Swastika as a symbol" isn't an idea? Where would you get the idea that abstract symbols aren't routinely freighted with meaning by humans, and thus used to communicate ideas?
How so? what's the argument?
Nobody is expressing that idea. You are making an unwarranted assumption. Inanimate objects are incapable of defending an idea, which was the whole point of freedom of speech. Not just to be able to state an idea, but be able to defend it in open debate.
How do you propose a flag can defend an idea?
Moreover, I can put a flag in my store for trolling purposes, or just as a freedom of speech prop. Why are you assuming intent from inanimate objects?
Most of human communication operates through these sorts of assumptions. Why would they be unwarranted? Are books not inanimate objects? Are letters and the written words we assemble out of them not inanimate objects? When someone waves a rainbow flag or a hammer and sickle flag, Are they not specifically inviting everyone watching to infer their message? If not, why wave the flag? And sure, this can be abused by assuming a message that was not the signaler's actual intent... and yet, flags exist as a tool of communication because such malicious interpretation is orders of magnitude less effective than the primary signal.
If your standards of rigor are that communication should be happening with no assumptions being made either way, I'll note that no actual human communication works or has ever worked this way.
Can a book defend its ideas in open debate? I mean, sort of. It seems to me that a flag can as well. Who's invoking the message and its associations, and how?
I'm not assuming, I'm inferring. Inference is a necessary and irreducible part of human communication, which is necessarily lossy, compressed, and unreliable in the best of times.
No, it does not. You are stating "these sorts of assumptions" as if they are identical when in fact the sort of assumptions are completely different.
Just because an apple assumption and an orange assumption are both assumptions, doesn't mean they are of the same sort.
This is a false equivalence fallacy,
Yes. Many people do read quotes from books in open debates precisely to argue what the author clearly did not intend to say.
It doesn't matter what "it seems to you". No one has ever argued in an open debate what a flag is intending to say, because all reasonable people understand that flags don't inherently say anything.
But even in the case when somebody is quoting a book verbatim, that doesn't mean they are saying anything about the quote. Sometimes they use the quote to criticize it, and argue precisely the opposite is true. Which means just repeating a quote from a book should not be assumed to be an endorsement of all the ideas contained in that book.
Yes, and in the worst of times it's completely detached from reality, which is the case.
Again a false equivalence fallacy on all inferences: they are not all the same.
I agree that not all equivalences are created equal. Things can be similar in some ways and different in other ways, and whether their similarities or differences should be focused on is dependent on the situation.
That being said, while you've made it clear that you strongly disagree, you have given little explanation as to why, and you appear to have ignored the arguments I put forward.
You ask:
And the answer seems obvious to me: Flags defend ideas by their very existence, because the purpose of a flag is to serve as a physically-tangible token of loyalty to an abstract idea. Again I ask you, if a flag does not exist to support the ideas associated with its symbolic content, for what other purpose do humans make, carry and wave flags?
If I put up a flag, that is obviously a message. I'm putting the flag up because I want to send a message! I'm broadcasting that message because I want other people to receive it! If this were not so, what other purpose does putting the flag up serve?
You do not speak for "all reasonable people". I think I am a reasonable person, and I will happily argue in an open debate what messages specific flags intend to say, because I perceive many flags to obviously hold such messages.
This flag means "Our willingness to live in peace with you is dependent on your respect for our personal liberties. If you cannot leave us in peace, we will defend ourselves from your encroachment."
This flag means "We support sexual minorities in their struggle for recognition and acceptance in society, and we oppose those who object."
Now, you could take the same rainbow flag, and say that to you it represents Christian Theocracy and the need to minimize and punish sin through the powers of the state, since the rainbow was God's symbol of peace with mankind after the flood. But the problem is that you would be the only person using the rainbow flag that way, and everyone else would still be using it to symbolize LGBT pride, and so the message people would actually receive is the pride one. In the same way, you could invent a novel definition for some common word, diametrically opposed to the common definition, and then insist that your definition takes precedence, but that would be stupid and counterproductive and most people would just assume you were trolling.
And yet, people make such inferences commonly, you will not be able to stop them from doing so, and communication requires accepting this reality and working around it.
What do you actually want here? I'm not even sure I want to argue that you're wrong, but what is your point? You seem to be objecting to the fact that humans in groups naturally coordinate together to create and maintain Overton windows, punishing those who fall outside them. Humans obviously do this, and there are obvious downsides to them doing this. It seems to me that humans generally perceive the upsides of such behavior to outweigh the downsides, and I do not think any meaningful number of them will ever agree to coordinate the opposite behavior in any consistent fashion. You can dislike this fact, but I'm exceedingly skeptical that you can change it, or that I'd even want you to succeed in doing so.
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.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link