I agree that these discussions are healthy. I would like to explore your initial comment though as we're dealing with culpability and intent.
> When we're considering regulation, it's important to consider the activity we're regulating in context. Here's one extreme: it's legal to light a match. It's not legal to light a match and toss it into a gas pump.
As you allude to intent matters here. Let's assume they went to the gas pump specifically to light a match and throw it into the gas pump. That is very specific and obvious intent and culpability is clear.
Now assume this person was merely lighting a cigarette in front of the pump and an ember falls off and causes a fire. Well the intent was not to set the place ablaze, but they were still either negligent or reckless in their actions, so while they are still culpable, intent is lacking here.
As a third hypothetical let's say they had a matchbook in their pocket and one match is dislodged and rubs between the striker strip and the person's cell phone, thus creating a fire while they're in front of the pump. Their intent was never to light a fire, so what is their culpability here?
Limiting ourselves to matters of scientific inquiry as related to free speech for the moment, how would the idea of culpability and intent as mentioned above factor into this? Someone espousing anti-vax opinions clearly does not have the intent of killing kids, their intent as I understand it is to prevent children from becoming autistic regardless of whether science agrees with them or not. Perhaps they could be considered negligent given current scientific understanding, but how do you even begin to consider culpability?
What if this is an area where science does not have an answer yet, but there's enormous public pressure to outlaw speaking about X or punish those who do. How does intent and culpability factor into this? Is it just "the law says x, you intended to violate it and are going to be held accountable" without any sort of deeper explanation as to why your rights were restricted? What happens if the science settles in the opposite direction as the laws and speech was curtailed wrongly in this specific framework? Similarly what happens if the laws are based on the science of the time, but the science itself discovers it erred in some way thus flipping it from being in agreement with to disagreement with the law?
Lastly how does this extend to matters where science may not provide a useful answer?
I just listened to the oral arguments given for Voisine v. United States and it's very analogous to this line of thinking. I'd highly recommend listening to it and reading the opinion.