Warp, please let it be.
I guess it's time for a (concluding) rebuttal & a lecture on serious matters, even though I'm seeing that I'm rather late, since elaborating on this has taken quite some time.
[quote Warp]
Quote:
Unless Warp you actually like hate speech?
No, but I'm a constitutionalist and free speech absolutist. I fully subscribe to the principle that Evelyn Beatrice Hall attributed to Voltaire: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
[/quote]
So what? Is that good or bad is what you should ask yourself instead.
[quote Warp]
There are two aspects to free speech: The legal meaning of "right to free speech", and the principle of free speech. If you say "free speech only binds the government" you are not actually supporting free speech. You are not subscribing to Voltaire's sentiment of "but I will defend to the death your right to say it".
If you think that when someone says something you don't like he should be punished in some manner, you do not support free speech. You support restricted speech.
When someone says "freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences" that's absolutely incorrect: That's exactly what it means. That's because if there are negative consequences to you because of your expression of opinion, that's not free speech. That's restricted speech. It's punishable speech. It doesn't make any difference whether the punishment comes from the government or from the people around you, the end result is the same: Your speech has been restricted. Your expression of opinion has been restricted. The people who are punishing you are not defending your right to free speech, and are instead actively trying to restrict your free speech, to silence you.
[/quote]
So what? Under what circumstances that's good or bad is what you likely should investigate for all of these considerations.
[quote Warp]
This is not about criticism. Criticism in itself is part of the fundamental right to free speech. Trying to silence criticism is trying to restrict people's fundamental right to free speech.
[/quote]
So what? And that's already where your argumentative reasoning stops?
[quote Warp]
If you are yelled at, boycotted, have your show canceled, or get banned from an internet community, then your free speech rights are being violated. You are being punished for your expression of opinion. It doesn't make one iota of a difference that it's not the government that's punishing you. It doesn't really matter who is punishing you. The end result is the same.
[/quote]
[quote Warp]
"Free speech absolutism" does not mean "absolutely everything is allowed to be said." It means "free speech is unconditional, inalienable". It's the principle that you retain your right to free speech regardless of what you may or may not have done or said. Your right to free speech is not conditional on anything. Past (or even present) crimes and infractions do not affect it. You don't lose your right to free speech because you may have committed a heinous crime. Your right to free speech is absolute, irrevocable, inalienable, unconditional. Your right to free speech should not be restricted nor limited because of your past actions. If you allow person A to express opinions, you should also allow person B to express opinions even if you find that person B to be absolutely detestable because of past actions.
[/quote]
So what? And that's still where your thought creation process for argumentative reasoning stops, repeatedly? Or is it the common type of self-inflicted delusion that arises from (for active debating inadequate) uncritical laziness or also arises from the at least in this instance unjustified (since not enough questioned) habit of mental reliance on falsely as complete & accurate enough memorized states of affairs, or is it a lack of feel or care for healthy reflection & self-critique?
[quote Warp]
There are limits to free speech, but those limits should be as narrow as possible and very carefully considered. A balance should be found that maximizes freedom while restricting criminal activity.
[/quote]
Because this at least is a good sign, but
not good enough to rely on.
[quote Warp]
However, if they are merely banning you because they don't agree with your opinion and find it detestable, they are not adhering to the principle of free speech.
[/quote]
So what?
[quote Warp]
The principle of free speech entails many things. Among others:
- You are free to express your (non-illegal) opinions in a public forum without negative repercussions, and without being impeded or silenced. (Swearwords are not opinions. Not even if phrased as if they were opinions)
- You are free to comment on and criticize other people's opinions (preferably in a civil manner) without negative repercussions.
- You are not forced to listen to someone if you don't want to.
- You cannot be stopped nor interfered from listening to someone you want to listen to. The message being said cannot be censored or interfered with (e.g. with noise), with the intentional purpose of making it harder to understand or listen to.
- You are not compelled, forced or coerced into saying something (or performing any other form of messaging) you don't want to.
[/quote]
And once more, finally:
So what?
Warp, part of the issue here may be that in your worldview you may be using an assumption of the form of speech in and of itself not having directly on it depending and to it susceptible logically (as opposed to temporarily) im-mediate causal (negative or sub-optimal) consequences, but in face of absurdly vast amounts of evidence against such a view, this would not be an assumption ethically worth to uphold.
No principle is excluded from being justifiedly restrictable if the circumstances ethically require it based on the purpose of optimizing for something more important than any single principle or all of them together, namely the overall, and especially future development of well-being of people. In more detail for this example case of a principle, as long as restricting people's free speech causally would necessitate worse consequences overall than if people kept someone's free speech to be allowed, it's better (and a wiser choice if this conclusion was deduced coherently based on arguments with merit) to avoid doing so. But this ethical justification for the protection of free speech has a finite, limited threshold, and once abuse of free speech surpasses it by rendering the alternative option (namely to confront the person on what they're doing and trying to better their behavior) ethically more beneficial now, that is the point at which free speech is fine (with ethical certification seal of approval, so to say) to be overruled, and this holds analogously for any other conceivable principles for which such a scenario is possible.
And the worth of any principle imaginable always has to be seen in view of the ethicality of the totality of its (immediate and long term) consequences. The generally solid though not ethically immune or infallible principles such as truth (speaking), personal opinion, or freedom (in general, or of personal will, or of any or certain speech) not being exempt or absolved from the axiomatically necessary subjection of them to the evaluation of their moral worth (just as this holds for everything else just as much for moral investigation) is unfortunately a fact that is far too rarely recognized, understood, and accounted for by people all over the world (and even someone like Kyle Kulinski who otherwise makes great points all around so far appears to fail to recognize this important justified critique of the common principles that come in too simple, smooth, undifferentiated forms for their own good), and I think we really don't need any more of it.
Ethicality is the sole ultimate measure stick for judgement in all moral affairs; philosophically it reigns above all. Do you understand me on this, Warp? It even is always to be at least as much preferred as, or above and beyond any and all written laws (of which the goal anyway is to approximate the former, and which are essentially not a glimpse more though also no less than written down opinions of people that can happen to be or for more meritorious reasons end up being ethically correct or not) e.g. that any country's people nominally may claim to abide by, and if those laws are from the past, present, or future or what authority they may come from doesn't matter the slightest for reasoning on their merits because that's not how the empirical and theoretical sides of the natural sciences work which unarguably encompass not just the origin of but also the entire realm of all moral reasoning. and don't even dare trying me on this one, or you're gonna have a bad time. And besides actually at least trying to learn how to do these mental moral assessments or approximate calculations, this probably is the most crucially important principle to understand for humanity on this planet, and is a fundamental, required step towards solving or at least alleviating the Bounded Ethicality problem:
https://ethicsunwrapped.utexas.edu/glossary/bounded-ethicality .
[quote moozooh]
3. This thread is not for the discussion of the free speech principles or their implementation. Please go discuss them in a separate thread if you will. Any further derailment will be removed.
[/quote]
Well, once it appears like there's need to do so, then remove it (by splitting it up into another thread), just don't outright delete it, or I ended up putting a lot of thought, time and energy into this for nothing and that then solely for trying to be thorough.