Comment by sinxoveretothex | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sinxoveretothex | Hacker News Reader

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sinxoveretothex

Why is it necessary to "come down hard" on people who express morally wreak (or even stupid) viewpoints?

Surely, putting forth a better argument or, at least, ignoring them is a far more morally superior response than suppressing their speech?

I've recently read about Bobby Sands (who was a IRA member who starved himself to death) and am reminded of that monk who lit themself on fire in protest.

I think an interesting question about these two people is why did their action have any impact? The authorities were against them and killing themselves doesn't "oppress" those authorities.

I think the opening paragraph of this book http://www.jstor.org/stable/3750951 is an interesting angle: martyrs against a cause illegitimize a cause.

If that is true, as I think it is, then it is crucially important to not victimize people no matter how wrong they may be. I think that the way to do that is, as I said above, to tolerate wrong viewpoints but respond to them or ignore them.

You think it's OK for a majority to say that racial Jews should not have property rights and then make it so? Eich achieved hos goal of writing oppression into the state constitution. Ignoring or tolerating promotion of oppression doesn't make it go away. (That's exactly the fair and balanced horseshit I was talking about.) Tolerating morally neutral actions is entirely different from tolerating morally bad actions.

Pretending that Eich's treatment for promoting oppression (or even the downvotes I've received for stating my views or you may have received for stating yours -- I've seen a lot of handwringing in this thread about maintaining multiple HN accounts and self-censoring themselves on HN as if that was some great horror) are in any way equivalent to actually taking away rights is another form of fair and balanced horseshit.

Suppose that everyone in the world (except Jews perhaps) believed that it WERE OK for them not to have property rights, then what would protect their property rights?

The truth is that what is right is decided by how well the arguments for it can convince people.

If you look back far enough, the arguments were: my army is stronger than you. As you get closer to the present, we tend to like using better arguments (the veil of ignorance for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veil_of_ignorance).

It's based on notions like the veil of ignorance that we can say maybe every human should have property rights lest the group we're part of today lose it when the balance of power shifts.

That's why I believe that jews should have property rights, but don't believe that advocating against what I believe should be stifled. I am confident enough that my argument is better than theirs to not need to prevent their speech if you prefer. I also don't believe that we should stifle: climate change denial, flat earthers, religious people, pro-life people and a host of other people that I believe are wrong.

You make a nonsense point (nobody is arguing for morality by majority rule) then refute it by pointing out that you have good arguments for advocating a certain morality. Then you make a straw man (nobody is arguing for stifling anybody).

At the core, you seem to agree with me that there are certain actions that we should be intolerant of. Things like murder we should not tolerate forcefully, and things like oppression, we should argue against strongly until they go into effect, in which case, other action is sometimes better.

Hmm, I thought thinking about my initial question would be enough to see my point from your perspective. Maybe it is.

You were, in your now flagged comment, arguing for stifling (or censoring if you prefer) people who, you believe, hold that kind of opinion.

The point I am making is that morality is only part of it. In practice, it doesn't matter that you're right if you're dead. You say that

> tolerating promotion of oppression doesn't make it go away

I'll answer that arguing with words without understanding the process that allows for people to agree to "fight" with words rather than weapons is even less likely to make bad ideas go away.

This won't convince you, I know, the tone of your replies shows an adversarial reading of my comments. But maybe one day you'll have a more skeptical approach to your own beliefs.

My now-flagged comment said absolutely nothing about censorship or stifling. It said bad actions shouldn't be tolerated. Again, what is bad isn't up for vote. It can be deduced logically -- see my other posts. Otherwise, why do people not follow the "extremes" in their religious texts?

You seem to hold a revisionist historical view that the civil rights movement was entirely unproductive, even though it was unpopular at the start (again, morality doesn't depend on the majority). Loudly pointing out bad actions works.

The funny thing about that now-flagged comment is that it was up to +5 points before it dropped fast. There must be an unwritten rule against calling out superstitions.

> It said bad actions shouldn't be tolerated.

What do you mean by not tolerating if not stifling? If you look at the Mizzou and Yale things, stifling is exactly the right word: "we're just walking forward", "we can't hear you" and others.

> You seem to hold a revisionist historical view that the civil rights movement was entirely unproductive, even though it was unpopular at the start (again, morality doesn't depend on the majority).

My argument isn't that it didn't work, but that you fail to understand why it worked.

It worked because the arguments were convincing, not inherently because people pointed to something and said "this is stupid".

It has nothing to do with being loud (in the literal sense that I understand you to mean it).

Perhaps a better way to say what I'm trying to is: I think that the reason you arrive at the "right" conclusion is coincidental. The approach is flawed and it does and will lead to nonsense sometimes.

Another way to show what I mean is by counter-example: if someone advocated for, say, racial tolerance because they argued that we can't know who's a Christian based on race, I don't care if we agree on the conclusion, the process is a big problem.

Once again, you're pretending I said things that I didn't actually say. I said that certain bad actions should not be tolerated. Where you get stifling from this, I don't know. In particular, your first post claimed that we shouldn't be intolerant of people implementing (not merely talking about) Biblical punishments on gays, which is what I claimed that our society rightfully would very harshly not tolerate, just as our society wouldn't tolerate government-sanctioned mass lynchings of blacks

Yes you did say actions in that last post. I'm fairly certain your flagged post argued for "coming down hard" on people advocating for certain things rather than doing things. I'm fairly sure, given the tone, that I would still disagree with whatever you mean by "coming down hard"/"not tolerating", but this is getting speculative so I think this is a moot point.

> Biblical punishments on gays

Where does that come from? Was that what Eich wanted?

As far as I know, there was no advocacy for violence (something we do punish but in a due process, legal manner).

Are you arguing that you see no difference between 'death to the sinners' and whatever notion of 'sanctity of marriage' Eich might have espoused?

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