Most of those ideas didn't die out because one day people found out about them, and then we put an end to them.
Most of them _everyone_ knew about for thousands, or even tens of thousands of years, why didn't this "sunlight" disinfect them?
Most of them _everyone_ knew about for thousands, or even tens of thousands of years, why didn't this "sunlight" disinfect them?
This is false.
For most of the past several thousand years of history, "knowledge" has been imposed and speech has been restricted by religious and/or political decree.
Freedom of speech, along with the value of the individual, are enlightenment values - i.e., they have only been around for a couple of hundred years, and even then only in a few parts of the world, and even then they have continued to be suppressed and assaulted at every opportunity.
But those of us who have been lucky enough to grow up in societies that have relatively high levels of freedom of speech and freedom of the individual can easily take these freedoms for granted.
But if you look at all the positive societal changes that are espoused by people who believe in liberal values: workers' rights, women's rights (to vote, work, refuse or leave marriage, own property, drive), equality and rights for racial/religious minorities, immigrants, the disabled, gay people, etc; these changes have happened first where there has been the greatest freedom of speech.
Yes I know it's unpleasant to hear speech that feels uncomfortable or dangerous, but be assured it is immeasurably better than the alternative.
Edit:
For what it's worth, I've been paying attention to the David Icke story since he first appeared on London Real a few weeks ago, and I'm a financial supporter of an investigative reporter who has gone deep researching and revealing the possibility that this whole thing looks like a financial scam by London Real.
It looks every bit like The Streisand Effect is at work here, and that YouTube's ban of Icke is only serving to amplify his signal, increase his following and generate huge amounts of money for London Real (and possibly Icke too).
So it's the Hydra myth playing out yet again. Be careful what you wish for.
That is absolutely not in evidence.
The mere public existence of an idea (like in some dusty old book that nobody reads) is not sufficient to change majority option, no.
For example, the idea of a nobility class.
If your claim is that we shouldn't expect this to continue in the future, that's a whole new claim that you need to support.
I mean, even the example used ("the noble class") is preposterous on face because:
1. The Russian Revolution? Germany 1849? Even the American Revolution? None of these are about ideas, or "shining the light on ignorance" -- they're about putting the nobility up against the wall. If there's some kind of teleology at play here, it's not that we thought about it in the marketplace of ideas long enough and decided to do away with the concept.
2. Nobility still exists! At best, this just means we live in a secular society, where we no longer believe the Word of God justifies massive inequality.
It was one-line discussion-board summation of what is widely accepted by historians (as you said, "trivially true"), but if you'd like to share an explanation of how the spread of ideas leading to the revolutions of Europe could have happened without an innovation that had the same effect as the printing press did, I'd be intrigued to to read it.
> patently absurd
So far, three of your replies in this thread alone have contained the word "absurd".
They probably all break the HN guidelines ("Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation", and "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says").
But more importantly, you're too busy sneering at other people's comments to make any positive assertion of your own.
So what is it you actually want to persuade us of, about the appropriate levels of constraints on speech in the modern world?
History is more complicated than a single invention! It's needlessly reductive.
I could also say: "how could have the revolutions of Europe happened without mercantile capitalism challenging the economic structures of feudalism?" But that's just imposing a post-hoc narrative on history that happens to fit my existing views.
> So what is it you actually want to persuade us of, about the appropriate levels of constraints on speech in the modern world.
My sole reason for participating in this thread is to firmly reject idealism and the teleological view of history. Ideas aren't magic. Technology isn't either.
(P.S. it's kind of hilarious that you're invoking HN rules regarding my speech in the same breath as you are defending the merits of free speech.)
Yes, of course, I never claimed otherwise. But some concepts are more fundamental and influential than others, and the flow of information is more fundamental and influential than most.
> My sole reason for participating in this thread is to firmly reject idealism and the teleological view of history. Ideas aren't magic. Technology isn't either.
If that's all you're trying to say, then, OK, thanks for pointing that out.
> it's kind of hilarious that you're invoking HN rules regarding my speech in the same breath as you are defending the merits of free speech
Fine, have your free point :)
But dismissing everyone else's comments as "absurd", "preposterous", "hilarious" etc whilst not making any effort to construct a solid assertion about the main topic is just a waste of everyone's time.
Only as formality in some countries. In America, there are some people who call the Kennedys "America's aristocracy", call JFK's white house "Camelot", and make references to members of the Kennedy family being "entitled" to office, but there's no legal basis for it.
Apartheid in South Africa is also gone.
America literally has a nobility class right now. The UK isn't far off.
Literally nope. For example, there is no law that says the word of one group of people is worth more in court than another group. There are no laws saying only certain people can be in power based on their ancestors. There is no law enshrining divine right.
And yet.
> There are no laws saying only certain people can be in power based on their ancestors.
And yet. Just because there are no explicit written laws does not mean this doesn't happen every single day in multiple ways.
[1] e.g an extremely unpopular incumbent against a popular challenger with excellent ground game.
This is somewhat true of course (though Obama is a notable recent exception).
Indeed it's pretty true in most countries and systems of government (though my closest experience is here in Australia, where all our prime ministers going back almost 40 years, and most others in our ~120 year history, have come from modest origins).
But the topic at hand is freedom of speech/expression.
Whose interests are likely to be served, ultimately, by constraints on speech/expression?
Those already holding power, or those seeking to reform/subvert the system?
Obama - commoner
Clinton - commoner
Reagan - commoner
Carter - commoner
Ford - commoner
Nixon - commoner
Truman - commoner
Sounds like routinely to me.
> Most of them _everyone_ knew about for thousands, or even tens of thousands of years
That's not true. People didn't know about it. When the sunlight came, people changed their beliefs relatively quickly compared to how long the false beliefs were held. Sometimes within a few years, but generally within a generation.
stevebmark said "I've never seen a bad or immoral or harmful idea die out when more people learn about it and scrutinize it"
So I gave examples of some ideas that did in fact die out when people learned about them and scrutinized them. My argument was that it's naive to think censoring ideas this time will be on the right side of history.
Then suddenly there were factories who would hire anybody who showed up and pay them real money and plantation workers started running off to work in the factories left and right. It was no longer that people stayed because they had no better option, they were then being forced to stay against their will. The dynamic changed. Chains and beatings entered the scene to keep slaves from running off. They did anyway, so their replacements had to be forcefully kidnapped because there were no longer any volunteers.
The whole thing collapsed and was dismantled in a relatively short period of time after that.
There's no natural inclination of humans towards justice or injustice, beyond the limits of our own psychology. To me, the idea that there is some internal teleology towards justice is absurd. These are material struggles and material gains that must be defended materially.
We should reject this kind of naive idealism.
It seems that having free speech is a necessary, although not sufficient, condition to improve society. It's a principle worth defending.
My opposition to censorship derives from the fact that it tends to require an unjustified hierarchy (i.e. the violence of the state).
However, I have a real problem with imparting some kind of magical quality to ideas. I'm particularly annoyed by the way in which free speech advocates act like social norms are a form of censorship. More specifically, that free speech requires platforming -- i.e., rejecting a freedom of association.
While I do think that the power companies like Google exert of society is well wroth investigating, in general I find that these are much weaker examples of the use of force to censor ideas.