We are all prisoners of groupthink
unherd.com
unherd.com
Social media has made it far easier to display your values to other people. Rather than led to diversity, it has massively consolidated the range of "acceptable" opinions to a serious of slogans and "approved" ideas that everyone must agree with.
And btw, I don't think actual values have changed. But what has happened is that we have a very vocal and determined minority that feels the need to judge other people who disagree with them.
That is the point of the Village. Everything you do is controlled by social pressure. To give an example, where I am the police now spend a lot of time on social media prosecuting because it is so easy to build a case. Social media is the avenue for this control.
Just personally, I was never the biggest fan of social media. I thought Facebook was a conspiracy to steal my personal data in 2008. But I did use Twitter to build a business a few years later. I would never do this again. You are just exposed to far too many idiots. This was true back in 2011 when I was using it, it is doubly true today. Social media encourages idiots to have an opinion about things they don't understand.
Now, though, the people that they targeted, instead of rejoicing that their oppressors are finally powerless to harm them, are taking up the mantle of oppressor themselves. There's a sense of "giving them a taste of their own medicine" - and if the actual perpetrators are too hard to find, anybody that reminds them of the perpetrators will do.
History suggests that this, too, will ultimately be defeated, but not after a lot of damage is done to very innocent bystanders.
"If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart? During the life of any heart this line keeps changing place; sometimes it is squeezed one way by exuberant evil and sometimes it shifts to allow enough space for good to flourish. One and the same human being is, at various ages, under various circumstances, a totally different human being. At times he is close to being a devil, at times to sainthood. But his name doesn't change, and to that name we ascribe the whole lot, good and evil.
Socrates taught us: "Know thyself."
Confronted by the pit into which we are about to toss those who have done us harm, we halt, stricken dumb: it is after all only because of the way things worked out that they were the executioners and we weren't.
From good to evil is one quaver, says the proverb.
And correspondingly, from evil to good."
-Gulag Archipeligo
Most people in the movement have no memory of the 1980's.
Over time, whatever group or cause you focus on, you demonize it so much, justify fighting them the same way they fight you (or you perceive them to be fighting you), that eventually you're just like your enemy, only with different slogans.
That's why political differences should never be represented as wars, and groups of people with other opinions as enemies. Every effort should be made to personalize people who disagree with you, humanize them, show them kindness they do not deserve (at least in your own mind). It's not for them; it's for you.
Wars are bad not because there's some worthy cause that we confront and eventually defeat it, making the world a better place. Wars are bad because they harm the people fighting them, many times forever.
In the free world, we've realized that peaceful, loving, kind civil disobedience is the only way to change ourselves for the better. This is why. It has nothing to do with how worthy our cause is or what an awful thing we're defeating. It's about the stage we leave for the next generation with their struggles.
The social structures of antiquity (European or otherwise) were horrible. We should be grateful to the people who had the courage to defy those social norms.
It's identity politics and this push of feelings and individual's 'truth' over actual reality and data. I've never felt so terrified. You can't talk about reality, about a lot of things. The BLM movement is the same. If the actual facts don't fit the narrative, you can't say them. How can we fix the problems if we can't even acknowledge what is real?
No matter how you feel about transgender issues, there is no denying that they currently have an outsized influence on the media narrative.
If you want to discuss the plight of transgender individuals, then the tremendously harmful medical treatment they receive should be right at the top of your list of grievances.
Unless that’s hate speech, and you’d prefer to discuss only alternative, less hateful realities.
No, it doesn't. The source for that claim [0] doesn't control for people being transgender, comparing instead recipients of the surgery to the general population, which is not be a fatal flaw for some uses of the research (such as the conclusion of the actual report, that sex reassignment surgery is, alone, seems to be inadequate as treatment and needs supplementation), but it certainly is for the question “is sex reassignment surgery harmful, helpful, or neither for transgender individuals?”
Studies that are actually directed at that question find that it is beneficial,
https://medicine.yale.edu/news-article/21447/
https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/publications/suicidal...
[0] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal..., mostly entering American right-wing propaganda as an argument for the position you use it for via https://www.heritage.org/gender/commentary/sex-reassignment-...
I also don’t think it’s a very valid criticism to dismiss the most comprehensive research on this topic to date, performed at Sweden’s largest medical research institution, as “American right-wing propaganda”.
However, it is valid to dismiss the Heritage's conclusions on the study as American right-wing propaganda as the study doesn't support their conclusions whatsoever. That study compares the effects of gender reassignment surgery to the general population, not a population of transgender people who never underwent surgery. Any statement you would make about gender reassignment surgery would necessarily be confounded by the affects of being transgender at all.
I'm not sure which of my links you are inaccurately referring to, but the first paragraph of the first one states, in relevant part:
> Transgender individuals who undergo gender-affirming surgery are significantly less likely to [...] attempt suicide in the years following the procedure, new research led by the Yale School of Public Health finds.
So, yeah, it mentions suicide quite prominently.
> I also don’t think it’s a very valid criticism to dismiss the most comprehensive research on this topic to date, performed at Sweden’s largest medical research institution, as “American right-wing propaganda”.
I didn't dismiss the study as right-wing propaganda (in fact, I explictly said that it's methodology is perfectly appropriate to the question it sets out to explore, and the conclusions it actually draws.)
I referred to it's misuse to support the claim that sex reassignment surgery causes those problems rather than that being transgender in today’s society causes them and sex reassignment surgery alone fails to adequately resolve them American right-wing propagadanda, largely originating with the American right-wing propaganda mill known as the “Heritage Foundation", which made that exact misuse which is neither a conclusion of the study nor supportable with it's results, which does not compare transgender individuals who receive the surgery with those who do not because the purpose of the study was not to address the question that American right-wingers want to abuse it to support.
I feel that you're entitled to your opinion that transwomen are men but why shouldn't you be subject to the opinion of other people? If Reddit decides it's not the sort of content they want to allow on their site then I see nothing wrong with them removing it. You're free to register transwomen-are-men.com or get-the-blm-facts.com where you can discuss your beliefs to your heart's content with others who share your opinion. Finally I would point out that "womaness" is a mental and social construct so I'm not sure what facts there are to quibble about. If people were claiming that transwomen are of the female sex then that is obviously factually incorrect.
For now... there have been other domains whose registrars have been repeatedly banned / revoked for "hate speech", Daily Stormer comes to mind.
There are people who believe that the earth is flat. They're wrong. They're entitled to their opinion, but that doesn't mean that their opinion isn't objectively, demonstrably wrong.
>Simply because they don't believe transwomen are women
"Simply".. really? And before too long ago people "simply" didn't believe that a man could be attracted to another man.
It's ok to discuss the topic, but how can you expect to not sound like a complete bigot if your premise boils down to "I don't believe how you feel"
>It's identity politics and this push of feelings and individual's 'truth' over actual reality and data
That makes no sense. A man telling you "I feel way more like a woman" is not putting feelings over reality/data. It's introducing you to data that you never knew existed. Mostly because the presumption has always been that gender is completely binary; but it's just not that simple. The amount of gay/transgender/asexual people should be all the evidence you need.
If I have every reason to be "happy" (like infinite money, not a care in the world), but I tell you "I'm sad.".. is that also putting reality/data over an individuals feelings? Of course not- I'm the only one who can tell you what I feel, even if it may sound irrational. The same is true about transgender; that is simply what they feel.
>How can we fix the problems if we can't even acknowledge what is real?
You can start by acknowledging how people feel, even if you can't understand it yourself.
Clearly you and the person you're replying to have a different definition of "woman". To them, "woman" is a classification based on biological aspects, like having two x chromosomes, to you "woman" is something more abstract.
>to you "woman" is something more abstract.
Yes, and that's what we are talking about.. not the pure biological definition. If someone is going to stick with the pure biological definition then they have just closed their mind before even beginning a discussion.
BLM: it is proven by various metrics (economic, medical statistics etc.) that the Black Americans are being left behind because of SYSTEMIC racism. A radical change is necessary to address that, and people who want status quo wants 1. to deny that it exists 2. to resist the movement.
The "reality" changes everyday. The "truth" is not constant, because we don't know everything. So "terrified" that you may be wrong just may mean that you are clinging to the old "truth" and unwilling to change.
(Btw? It costs you nothing to acknowledge someone that they exist as they are, whether you believe it or not. They want to be called she/her? Fine. You can still have your opinion and respect someone's existence - it's not either-or.)
The distinction between gender and sex has been discussed in trans communities to death. What's really happening here is that someone claims trans women are men, the trans community responds by saying, "sex and gender are different concepts, we discussed that already". And then the original people just keep repeating, "but they're men, that's biology."
Even from the perspective of just having a productive conversation, if people aren't bringing anything new to the table -- if it's just noise -- then I think that both individuals and communities have the right to filter out that noise. The marketplace of ideas should filter out arguments that can't evolve or respond to new ideas.
If I show up in a science forum and start claiming that evolution is crazy because "no one was alive back then to see it", at first I might get honest responses. But if afterwards I just keep saying the same thing again, eventually the community might decide that it's not their job to get me over that hurdle. And it's fine for them to decide who they want to engage with, there is no Right to Communicate without the Right to Filter[0].
If someone wants to bring a genuinely new argument to the table that doesn't ignore trans responses that have already been given, then maybe there's something to be said there. But I'm honestly really unimpressed with most anti-trans arguments that I hear online, I think most of them add nothing to the conversation at all.
Is that "enough" though? If one group discusses something and comes to some form of consensus, where's the idea coming from that that consensus must be adopted by everyone else as well?
Why is your opinion about a group that you're not a part of suddenly more important?
Well, for two reasons.
A) the marketplace of ideas is explicitly designed around the concept that some ideas win, at least at a broad cultural level. Free speech advocates aren't trying to build a world where every idea is treated with equal respect everywhere, they're trying to build a process by which, in general, we move closer to truth[0]. That doesn't mean that the ideas can't resurface in the regular marketplace, but it does mean that for ideas to be taken seriously by the broad, regular population, they have to actually convince people.
The anti-trans arguments I see online are mostly just really unconvincing to anyone who's done marginal research on trans communities. I'm not an expert on trans communities, I don't have a lot of diverse friends -- I shouldn't know more about trans arguments than the average TERF does; and yet I regularly find that I do.
To look at it from a broader market perspective, is it a failure of the marketplace that none of the restaurants on my street sell ice cream with ketchup and green beans? Or is it a success of the marketplace? The marketplace demands that you be able to actually sell what you have, you have no moral claim to force the marketplace to provide you with customers.
More importantly,
B) the consensus doesn't need to be adopted by everyone and hasn't been adopted by everyone, but private communities aren't required to engage with ideas that aren't furthering their own conversations/goals. And for better or worse, because some of those private communities are very attractive to the broader public, those communities exercising their Constitutionally protected Freedom of Association means that there are fewer spaces that contrarians can join.
But again, that's kind of how the system is designed to work. It's contradictory to say that in a free market, people shouldn't be able to choose where they shop. It's contradictory to say that in a free society people shouldn't be able to choose who they associate with.
The irony is that it's the far left candidates like Warren[1] who have had by far the most sensible, market-friendly response to the problem of people being deplatformed. If Facebook/Apple is too big, break it up and enforce antitrust. Don't try to nationalize it, or dictate how people can speak, or get rid of fundamental protections like Section 230. Just get rid of the monopolies and let communities compete for members.
Outside of solutions like that, I am very skeptical of any argument that claims to be in support of free speech that doesn't think protesting, boycotting, and public criticism are also speech. A lot of cancel culture falls into those bounds: I see people who are angry about boycotts, public criticism, markets responding to consumer demand, private communities like Twitter choosing who they host. Most of that stuff is free speech.
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[0]: And there are other goals as well, of course, but that's the main conceit of the "marketplace of ideas" argument.
[1]: Doctorow also has some interesting ideas here about revising the CFAA and breaking down some barriers for building competitors, but that's a separate conversation.
Right, but "this idea won in this local market, therefore it must not be challenged in that global market and doing so is a hate crime" has giant issues.
> B) the consensus doesn't need to be adopted by everyone and hasn't been adopted by everyone, but private communities aren't required to engage with ideas that aren't furthering their own conversations/goals.
But that's not what's happening. If something gets defined as hate speech, it's not a private matter, it's a criminal matter. Once we accept that as a valid process, we're just asking "who has the power to define" and give them a carte blanche for criminal punishment. I find that deeply troubling, and given that definitions, majorities and power has changed, I believe so should everyone, as the weapons they build today might be turned on them tomorrow. A somewhat recent example for that was the introduction of FB's anti-hate-speech rules that suddenly outlawed "men are trash", much to the outrage of those who asked for the rules.
Especially when it's on individual personal feelings and the only question we ask is "how man Twitter followers do you have" ("you have more, the market place of ideas has decided"), we're setting ourselves up for instability where it's best not to talk to anyone you don't 100% trust. I have relatives who lived under the Stasi, and that's pretty much what they described - if you don't know somebody very well, you limit yourself to talking about the weather and parroting the party line.
> A lot of cancel culture falls into those bounds: I see people who are angry about boycotts, public criticism, markets responding to consumer demand, private communities like Twitter choosing who they host.
I think there's a lot to say about what is a private community (and at what size it stops being one) and what they are allowed to do. Discrimination is generally considered bad, but the law enforces protection only for protected groups as it's assumed that everybody else will have no trouble to find a competing business. This cannot be said for the local monopolists on the web.
Personally, I'd prefer to not get into all out war where you get cancelled and ostracized and need to move to some place where "your people" live (by whatever criteria you define that) because the local majority rules absolutely and destroys everything that is unlike them.
That said: if anybody prefers the segregation, I'd love it if they were honest about it and said "I don't want to see that opinion, you must leave". The moralizing and pseudo-science rationalization of it makes everything hazy and dishonest, like an invisible mine-field that we must not acknowledge even exists, much less talk about and say where the mines are buried.
Wait, what? Hate speech is protected by the 1st Amendment. Nobody's being criminally prosecuted for being anti-trans.
> A somewhat recent example for that was the introduction of FB's anti-hate-speech rules that suddenly outlawed "men are trash", much to the outrage of those who asked for the rules.
Which is not a criminal matter, it's a private community deciding who they want to allow into their own space. Facebook is doing exactly what you want below:
> I'd love it if they were honest about it and said "I don't want to see that opinion, you must leave"
The reason they're saying that is because the anti-trans arguments are generally pretty poorly thought out and unhelpful, but it doesn't really matter why they're saying it. They have the right to say it.
Legally, 1st Amendment protections today are extremely strong, arguably stronger than they have ever been. Culturally, people want control over their own communities and they want the freedom to choose who they associate with. I think that's completely consistent with free speech.
Again, if you think that Facebook is too big and it's a defacto public square, then the solution is to break Facebook up and remove regulations around content scraping and adversarial interoperability that get in the way of competition.
You can't protect free speech by telling people who they are and aren't allowed to criticize and associate with. It's cutting off your own nose to spite your face. I'm not old, but I'm old enough to remember when free speech advocates were against the Fairness Doctrine. What happened to those people?
Check your privilege! You'll be very much criminally prosecuted for hate speech in most (I believe all, but don't know the specifics of each) European countries. The definition of hate speech is similar (and it's a global debate, so they converge), only we do not have a concept of free speech that is similar.
> Facebook is doing exactly what you want below
Absolutely. I gave it as an example that looking to weaponize rules can backfire, as the weapon can be turned against you as well. The more aggressive the weaponization of rules becomes ("I am offended" as a general trigger for suspension would be the equivalent of "free nukes for everyone"), the larger the chance that unintended side-effects materialize ("I wanted to be safe from their attacks, but this also outlaws my attacks").
I'm do agree with you that breaking up the monopolists is the much better way to go. But that seems very unlikely, the utility route is the one that I consider much more probable.
Very fair criticism. I don't think that Europe's restrictions are quite that broad, but there are a few countries with active hate speech laws on the books that are enforced.
That being said, Facebook doesn't really have control over European hate speech laws. This is worth keeping in mind, both Facebook and Twitter are American companies, and if they become utilities, they'll either become utilities under the American rules, or they'll get fractured and have different requirements for European users (see GDPR). I don't see how attacking Facebook/Twitter will change what the government can and can't do.
My (unrealistic) advice would be that if this is something Europe is really concerned about, then it should just adopt the more expansive American system of free speech. I realize that's unlikely to happen, but making a company public and giving the government control over what gets posted on it is a regression in free speech rights in most cases, no matter what country you're situated in.
You're worried about what happens if the government says that disagreement is hate speech. Have you considered the danger in the opposite direction?
What happens if the government says that criticizing a politician for openly bigoted remarks is cancel culture and not allowed, or that boycotting an awful company is illegal? What makes you think your government wouldn't abuse the power to force companies and individuals not to criticize, boycott, or filter objectionable content?
Even if you do live in a country with limited free speech protections, forcing platforms to carry content and forcing consumers not to boycott is counterproductive if you don't trust the government not to charge someone with a hate speech law. If you don't trust your government not to ban speech, you probably shouldn't trust it with compelled speech/association either.
My main problem with the idea of hate speech is that it hinges on individual judgement and is weaponized to suppress opposing speech. It's vague and in the end is only defined on a case-by-case basis by looking at the majority or the position of powerful institutions, and generally sympathy-based - a terrible foundation to build rules on.
You're certainly right that outlawing cancel culture would get us into trouble as well. We do have far reaching rules for compelled speech & association (not least via taxes that are redistributed), so I'm not sure there's a good reason to say "but we won't add this one" (I see no good reason to protect religious but not political convictions for example).
My favorite solution is to find rules that everybody is happy with, even if big tech fires all employees tomorrow and replaces them with proponents of the opposite ideology: build the shoe in such a way that you're okay if it's on the other foot tomorrow.
No, that's not why people get banned. They get banned because a portion of the gender critical crowd insist on harassment, sometimes taking that to people's workplaces.
It's almost as if actions have consequences.
Should you get fired? Or is that free speech?
"We All Need to Defend Speech We Hate"
https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-speech/we-all-need-defend-spe...
Isn't that one of the core tenants of the BLM campaigns? "Separate but equal" community policing for African American neighborhoods..
The core tenants of BLM are that CURRENTLY black communities are policed in a radically different way than white communities. BLM activists want everyone to have a just and fair policing.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2017/07/black-lives-matter-ra...
While there may be black separatists who support BLM, BLM is not a black separatist movement. Ultimately any black separatists will be frustrated by BLM's goals of an inclusive and just society.
Also, National Review is about as unbiased as Daily Kos, and has other ideological goals when discrediting BLM.
Advertisers not paying for Tucker Carlsons show is itself the advertisers speech, should we deprive them of it?
The poetry society is about how an organization wants to democratically run. For now it’s a letter, and if they take action, it would be through their democratic process... should people NOT be advocating for more robust responses from orgs they’re a part of?
The Cornell professor appears to have a long history when you look into what the students are saying...
I think you CAN find examples, but we probably need to create more robust criteria before making any claims
ETA the Tweet that was worthy of him being fired and cancelled: "Post-MLK-assasination race riots reduced Democratic vote share in surrounding counties by 2%, which was enough to tip the 1968 election to Nixon. Non-violent protests increase Dem vote, mainly by encouraging warm elite discourse and media coverage."
I think you'll find that cancel culture is vigilantism. There's nothing to moderate how severe the "consequences" are.
But (IMO) there are two separate issues at play here. 1. everyone is entitled to free speech 2. every action has consequences.
[truth] 1. People who get "cancelled" complain that they don't have free speech [which is obviously not true], which is the crux of the discussion here. The right/wrong of the opinion doesn't matter in free speech.
[opinion] 2. "Consequences" (IMO) is a mix of {a sense of righteous indignation, mob mentality, schadenfreude} - but more importantly, also very much free speech. Vigilantism implies taking the law into their own hands, which "cancelling" is not.
When I say "deserve a backlash", (IMO) it is because people who get "cancelled" are often people with a platform/entitlement/privilege. Taking that away is pretty much the only leverage that people have. Even after that, the right to free speech is still not lost.
(But do I think "cancelling" is ok? That's context-specific. I agree with some cancelling, some not.)
Notions of respectability is literally what the Village is about. The irony is incredible.
And yes, saying that transgender people pick funny names is not a hate crime. You may be unaware but in the UK we actually have fairly severe hate crime laws, you can go to jail if you say something hateful on social media...this isn't close (and btw, the prosecution service in the UK has said they will prosecute literally everything they can and specifically aim to crack down on "low-level" hate crime...the bar is exceptionally low).
Also "deserve a backlash"...again, the irony of saying this on an article discussing the Village is...too much. Why are you judge, jury, and executioner? Backlash doesn't exactly imply rehabilitation, it implies judgement and shaming.
Also: PLEASE note that "respect" and "respectability" are different. It is VERY important, especially if your first language is English. [/s]
I never said what Gareth Roberts said was a hate crime. It is just a heinous opinion, which in my opinion, deserves a backlash.
With the US elections going on, I am desperately sick of this rhetoric.
Many questions quickly surface, though. How can we tell who is less susceptible? How can we mode this variance? A single fixed number from 1 to 100 is certainly insufficient. And even if we can start to understand these phenomena, under what conditions can we actually apply the new knowledge for widespread benefit? What are the risks?
We're not discussing some random philosophical pie in the sky question. Speech that oppresses minorities deny their fundamental right to exist. Wouldn't you fight back if someone wanted to take away your life?
A lot of people have been murdered on as a result of hate speech. Emit Till, Michael Donald, James Byrd are a few.
Also, the Rwandan Genocide, historical Pogroms, lynchings, arguably the holocaust.
It's pretty hard to get humans to murder their neightbors without inciting speech.
Eh, I'm not so sure about that. En masse, with coordination? Maybe, but speech is mostly about coordination at that stage.
Would you say that everybody ever saying something untruthful or hatefull about the GOP is responsible for some lunatic storming the base ball practice of some GOP members of Congress with a gun and shooting at them?
Speech is certainly involved in the actual act of a pogrom, but it's not the driving force (unless your definition of speech gets really vague and everything ever said since the beginning of time is part of "the speech"). You don't have pogroms without previous animosity. Somebody saying something might spark the fire, but the wood has been there all along, soaked in gasoline.
That presumes the victimized communities have done anything to warrant violence. In the case of anti-jewish pogroms the inciting factor was often speech by newspapers and officials. How should we account for anti-semitic newspapers that made a good business of concocting lies about the crimes done by Jewish people in the community?
Consider the Kishinev pogrom where "the Bessarabetz paper insinuated that children had been murdered by the Jewish community for the purpose of using their blood in the preparation of matzo for Passover"[1].
No, it doesn't at all. It says that there is animosity, but not why it's there or whether it's valid or not. You might hate your neighbor because he's more successful than you, makes you feel inadequate with his good deeds, because he's literally Hitler or because he just so happens to look like somebody that wronged you. The fact that you hate him says nothing about whether that's justified. But your hate makes you susceptible to all kinds of suggestions for terrible actions against your neighbor. All it takes is for somebody to suggest burning down his house, or telling your that he has attacked another victim (or posted the wrong thing on Twitter to stay on topic!)
> In the case of anti-jewish pogroms to inciting factor is speech by newspapers and officials.
Doubtful. We'd have to look at the very first pogroms. If you're looking at the last 150 years, you're closing your eyes to the fact that pogroms against Jews were recurring events and anti-semitism was always around.
That's a problem, because you'll be surprised how these peaceful neighbors can turn into violent murderers practically over night. When you consider that they weren't peaceful neighbors right up until they became murderers, but that there was just a light cover over the hate for a while, there are much fewer unexplainable actions.
The rumors are the spark that I mentioned. The long-existing anti-semitism is the wood pile that is ready to be set ablaze.
Which arrives at the question, how does anti-semitism propagate through societies? It doesn't spring from nothing. What are the mechanisms that keeps the idea alive? Are all societies susceptible? Someone must be doing the work of keeping that wood pile dry and ready to catch light.
> Are all societies susceptible?
Given that we've seen some level of exterminatory warfare all over the place in history (I'm sure there's huge amounts that we don't know about because the victims have been annihilated), and it's not unheard of among other mammals as well, my money is on yes.
That some small nations did not wage war against their much larger and much stronger neighbors is not a counter example: the fact that chickens don't hunt wolves doesn't mean they're not predators, they'll happily eat worms, and will eat a mouse if they can catch it.
Shouldn't then societies try to structure themselves against this tendency?
We haven't tried adding empathogens to the water supply, maybe that's a good way to do it.
But can you explain why you think someone saying hateful things to someone else "denies their fundamental right to exist"?
This is a core argument that keeps getting spouted, and it's irrational nonsense.
If I said, "all programmers are terrible, lazy people and they can all go to hell", that's a terrible thing to say. But it in no way affects your right to _exist_, let alone any other right.
The burden is on you to give evidence, because it's total nonsense.
If I influence people consistently by saying that Programmers are terrible people; convince a bunch of people that it's true; then policies that target programmers are much easier to make into law.
Slavery existed in part because people thought black people were subhuman and plenty of people argued that quite publicly.
Or consider a gay child whose teachers say that gay people are going to hell? Do you think that wouldn't have an impact?
I really don't understand this idea that speech doesn't have consequences that cause disparate impact.
You said that hateful speech "denies [a person their] fundamental right to exist". You have not provided any evidence that this is true.
What you _have_ done is argued that speech has consequences and that people can influence others. (Which nobody would disagree with.)
You've also painted a theoretical picture where people go on a campaign to grow hate for a people group by spreading terrible propaganda, many buy into it, and the masses are turned against the people group. I never said this isn't possible, but it's certainly not an automatic outcome of hateful speech, and it doesn't support your assertion in question. At that point, their life is threatened because of the evil of these theoretical masses.
I hate that I have to break it to you, but the masses of civilized society are not out to kill any people group, regardless of anyone's hateful speech.
The speech is not the problem. The hearts of evil men and women are. You can't suppress speech enough to get rid of evil in the hearts of people.
Have a look through history, and you'll find many examples where this statement is absolutely not true. Is it true today? Maybe not, but it's reasonable to be worried about the direction we're going, considering where we came from.
> The speech is not the problem. The hearts of evil men and women are. You can't suppress speech enough to get rid of evil in the hearts of people.
If the heart is evil, but that evil is not expressed or carried out, is that really an issue? If speech is the manifestation of that evil, is it really meaningful to draw a distinction between the two?
You might be technically correct, but you're really just arguing semantics. And to what end?
Granted, but this is in response to a side comment of mine that was not part of my main argument.
> you're really just arguing semantics
False. I'm arguing the difference between direct, automatic outcomes of speech, and outcomes that only happen because of the evil that was already in someone's heart.
I'm really not sure what you're trying to argue any more. Where did the evil come from? Maybe it was learned by upbringing. Maybe it was born out of traumatic experiences. Nature vs. nurture and all of that.
So can you expand on what you see as the material difference between speech, the source of that speech (evil heart), the source of that evil heart (upbringing?). And how any of that makes a difference to the end result?
What do you say about someone who unintentionally and with good meaning aligns themselves with hate (e.g. the All Lives Matter folks)? The things said may not be born of evil, but the end result is just the same.
You haven't successfully clarified what exactly you're trying to argue.
Edit: I should clarify - I think it's useful to examine the evil heart, and the source of that, as it helps us understand where the speech comes from, but ultimately, none of that changes the direct or indirect result of the speech itself.
Of course not. But that's the same argument that's being made here. And it's obviously nonsense.
There's a reason that there is a legal (U.S.) precedent that allows for speech, but not directly telling people to commit violent acts. Of course I am culpable if I tell you to go kill programmers. If I didn't say that and you decide to do it, it's ridiculous to hold me responsible.
I hope that clarifies my perspective sufficiently.
It seems you are tilting at windmills. Where in this discussion has anyone claimed that words do not have effects?
Slavery has existed in every human society, everywhere in the world.
You are correct that this was the pathological, disgusting justification for keeping it, at least in the United States in the 19th century, but that isn't why it existed, not even in part.
Slavery still exists. There are more people living in slavery now than ever before in history.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0f/Meccan_m...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_Ottoman_Empire#...
But there is a cost to allowing speech to be offensive to certain races, groups, or lifestyles.
There is also a cost to restricting speech such that no one feels offended.
Which cost is higher? Which cost are you willing to pay? And furthermore, what is actually an effective plan. Is it realistic to think you can shut people up from being offensive? Is that even a workable plan?
Many people feel that the cost of restricting speech so that we can protect groups is vastly higher than the cost of allowing offensive speech.
Because apparently recently "words are violence" and now we even hear "silence is violence".
This is so 1789 French Revolution style.
You seem to be repeating yourself.
> the same as losing your head for being on the wrong side of the committee of public safety.
Your pattern recognition engine must have some problems. In 1789 and the following years people were vilified and arrested (and eventually killed by truckloads, but that's not the point) because they were too moderate or not extreme enough compared to the radicals leading the "new culture".
Here's what St just said in the good old 90's (1790s):
> "We must not only punish traitors, but all people who are not enthusiastic. There are only two kinds of citizens: the good and the bad. The Republic owes to the good its protection. To the bad it owes only death."
And Robespierre:
> "There are only two parties in France: the people and its enemies. We must exterminate those miserable villains who are eternally conspiring against the rights of man... We must exterminate all our enemies.” "
If you don't see any parallel with what's happening right now (the insidious dichotomy between good and bad), minus the guillotine, I am not sure what else I can tell you.
I honestly don't care about most of the political dramas of the day, but by not caring, I'm now somehow guilty of supporting the status quo! This is bonkers.
I think the difference is that laws aren't proposed or created based on programmers being lazy (to follow your analogy). However, there /are/ laws denying fundamental rights of, say, LGBT people (marriage, etc.).
That might be boiled down to "denies their fundamental right to exist" in a heated debate.
The basic position is crazy nonsense. It is so stupid that I doubt the trans people actually came up with it. They likely have a more nuanced view of their own existence - potentially even defined by their accomplishments rather than their gender. Perish the thought.
Let's say you are LGBT in a place that denies you certain medical care, marriage (and associated tax/estate benefits), denial from many stores, etc. Alongside other discrimination. Yes, you still /literally/ exist. But you also have an argument to say that your existence is not valued as much as others, and many parts of existing (see above examples) are denied to you.
It's a bit more pithy to say that your right to exist is being challenged, than having to dance around your extremely literal definition of existing.
I'm a man. I didn't make any special choice to be a man. I got labelled from birth, same as most of the other men. Someone may not like me enforcing the same standards on them as I do myself, or may think the standard unreasonable, but they aren't being valued any less if I apply a standard to them that I do to myself.
And it isn't an argument or slogan I've heard any actual trans people making; they tend to have non-metaphorical complaints.
The same standards are not being applied to different groups, that's the whole point as I understand it.
If you change your statement to "All people of color are terrible, lazy people and they can go to hell", you will rightly receive serious backlash due to the historical context, in which fundamental human rights have absolutely been denied.
Now rephrase that again to target people of Jewish descent, and it it becomes even more horrifying and closer to "denying the fundamental right to exist".
Context matters.
Are people taking some things too far? Possibly. But it's far from being a simple issue to navigate.
Edit: Please use your words, not the downvote button. I'm an open minded person and would like to understand your position if you disagree.
Apologies - I deleted examples that went too far
Do you think destroying someone's livelihood and reputation is the best way to change their views? Do you intend to punish, or to rehabilitate? Maybe you don't care about redeeming a racist (or some other deplorable) because you just want to send a message that such views are unacceptable. But all that does is create a radical with nothing left to lose.
But we also need to change peoples' hearts, so that they don't want to do that kind of stuff - so that they regard the "other" as fully human, just like they themselves are. As you say, destroying their life isn't the best way to do that. (Neither is nagging, lecturing, and berating people.) Then how do we do it? The only thing I know that can change peoples' hearts that way is the gospel of Jesus Christ. (Note well: I did not say going to church - it's not the same thing.)
Admitting this is even the case (which it isn't, as people recently are being cancelled for being just moderate, or for stuff they said when they were teenagers which is ridiculous), how can you justify having someone fired by a mob for something they SAID, therefore denying their livelihood?
It's the equivalent of burning their home, since employment is what enables people to secure long term security for themselves and their family.
So you are actively supporting denying the right to exist of people with whom you disagree with?
Go into your bosses office and use an ethnic slur and tell me what happens. Speech has consequences and hate speech rightfully has more consequences.
And you define what "hate speech" is and how severe the "consequences" are supposed to be. If you feel that something that was said about you is hate speech and you feel that only beating up the person would be an adequate consequence, then by all means, go for it?
I don't follow this at all. Of course people can get fired for things they say. This happens all the time in cases that have nothing to do with hate speech or other controversial issues.
But we don't.
I don't agree with the new definition of racist. There was a time not long ago that dressing up as a black person for Halloween was maybe insensitive but it was not considered racist. Especially since only the people who saw you were affected. (Now everyone can see everything)
Racist used to mean that you thought one race was superior or that one race was inferior. Now it means saying anything or doing anything that any segment of only one race's population considers offensive.
Many on one side of the political aisle will stone-face claim that it is not possible to be racist towards white people because they are the majority. That indicates that the definition has changed.
So, yes... we are discussing a philosophical pie in the sky because that's where the terms are being defined.