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"Your pretended fear lest Error should step in, is like the man who would keep all the wine out the country lest men should be drunk. It will be found an unjust and unwise jealousy, to deprive a man of his natural liberty upon a supposition he may abuse it. When he doth abuse it, judge. If a man speak foolishly, ye suffer him gladly because ye are wise; if erroneously, the truth more appears by your conviction 'of him.' Stop such a man's mouth by sound words which cannot be gainsayed. If he speak blasphemously, or to the disturbance of the public peace, let the Civil Magistrate punish him: if truly, rejoice in the truth." -- Oliver Cromwell, 1650.

Within four years of this letter, Cromwell would essentially have to put these Presbyterian inquisitors down by force and assume guardianship of the country because these people never stop.

Coincidentally, Cromwell also held that the right to the liberty of conscience, a largely heretical view for another century, was a fundamental requirement of his Protectorate, which he had to personally safeguard against everyone.

"Is not liberty of conscience in religion a fundamental? … Liberty of conscience is a natural right; and he that would have it, ought to give it; having himself liberty to settle what he likes for the public. Every sect saith: “Oh, give me liberty!” But give him it, and to his power he will not yield it to anybody else. Where is our ingenuousness? Liberty of conscience – truly that’s a thing ought to be very reciprocal."

Around the same time that Cromwell penned these inspiring words, he was also busy killing off hundreds of thousands of people in Ireland, amounting to maybe 40% of the population; perhaps as much as 80% in some parts of the country. I leave the reconciliation of his words with his actions as an exercise for the reader.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cromwellian_conquest_of_Irelan...

If you want to call Cromwell a hypocrite, the most tenable and intellectually honest but still ungrounded point of attack is that his support of liberty of conscience did not extend to Catholics.

His institutional anti-Catholicism and his suppression of the rebellion in Ireland were not aberrational by his context. That he was successful in achieving these objectives (e.g. defeating an insurrection and effectively criminalizing public Catholicism during the Protectorate) is the aberration. Cromwell was competent and that was his actual sin. He also happened to believe that self-directed (i.e. not dogmatic to a foreign power, e.g. Rome) conscience was a virtue to be established and maintained and for that should be seen as another facet of him as a human being.

That said, I don't disagree that the ethnically Irish have every reason to be livid that it happened, or that comparable events preceded and succeeded it through history, but to act as if Cromwell was categorically evil for what he did to the Irish is like saying America is categorically evil for firebombing Dresden in 1945. Yes, it was an atrocity given the perspective that distance and the luxury of time and peace provide, but it doesn't capture the whole provenance of the situation.

It seems to me you can find champions of liberty whose nice-sounding ideals don't have to be rigidly compartmentalized from commission of genocide and assumption of dictatorial powers.

Conversely, you can take writings from figures like Pol Pot that sound like the epitome of high-mindedness and self-determination - as long as you choose to regard those as a different facet from the genocidal totalitarian one.

Most, perhaps all, dictators have a likeable and reasonable aspect, and exhibit humor and benign intentions toward the mass of people that they consider to embody the national spirit. Likewise, most idealists who leave a stamp on history either commit or endorse acts that are at odds with their stated principles, but we can form some idea of their overall sincerity by examining the perceptions of their contemporaries.

> Nobody - no group, movement, person, or authority owns the truth.

Putting truth itself on a pedestal doesn't really address the problem.

The problem is people are motivated by things other than a good standard of truth most of the time. Social media provides a medium where it is easy for emotion can rule over reason and advertisers profit off of it.

> If people use the internet to say the most outrageous things then do be it.

Let's say everyone online starts calling you a pedophile because a soon-to-be-ex-wife of yours decided to try to cause you harm. What then? Is posting your address next also free speech?

The issue is not the truth, or access to it, but the fact we have large numbers of people that act on things less than the truth and a culture/economy that seems to perpetuate that for those who aren't interested. Putting these people in the same network as people who really want to talk about and debate ideas isn't working.

There are standards of truth but people that aren't ruled by reason won't obey them. They'll go with their gut, or what their friends say, or what they think they should say to impress their peers, or what everyone else is doing. For people who over their lives have been concerned more with survival or overcoming trauma than a real exchange of knowledge or ideas, often these strategies work well.

If I had an ex-wife that made that claim then I would sue for slander. That isn’t free speech or free thought - it’s an attack designed to damage a persons reputation.

Maybe it isn’t working - but why should I trust your alternative of deciding what’s ok and not ok to talk about? Why are you the authority? Why would I be?

We have laws - fire in a theatre, slander, etc. flat Earthers, holocaust deniers, climate change skeptics, etc all can say what they want. Provide the evidence they want. And I can disagree. I can vote in a manner that squashes their ideas from having any real power.

But here is the rub - just because I’m certain they are wrong doesn’t mean I automatically get my way. We need to be ever vigilant in defending what we believe to be the truth. In the end what works will win. What’s the alternative? It’s violence. History has proven this.

Slander and libel laws in the USA are extremely weak (in large part because of the 1st amendment). Your lawsuit will likely not accomplish much, if it wins at all. You need to show damage, not the intent to damage.

And the stories will still be out there, no matter how it turns out.

Then solve that problem. It still had absolutely nothing to do with my point.

You claimed you had some defense against being slandered. I'm pointing out that you don't have much of a defense at all.

Also, certainly you can vote in a manner that would, if done by a majority, squash ideas you don't agree with from having real power.

But you write with the myth of "rational man" in mind, it seems. The 20th century in particular, with the rise of both psychology and marketing, along with a couple of thousand years of insights from great thinkers of the past, should have made it clear that humans are deeply fallible, highly gullible, frequently irrational and easily manipulated.

You can vote however you like, but if there are forces determined to exploit human weakness by promoting lies and half-truths and hatred, there's a good chance that your vote will accomplish nothing. And not because you're wrong and "truth has won out", but because people are being manipulated, intentionally or otherwise.

I don’t really know what you’re talking about I guess. I don’t know if man is rational. But I do know for the history of man we have had (and still do) societies of knowledge-authority that have ultimately cumulated in fundamentalist authoritarians. This ends up in violence.

You have an opinion to be sure but why on Earth should I believe it as truth? What evidence do you have and what are you leaving out? Why is your observation so important as to restrict what others should see, hear, say, etc? Be rigorous.

What gives you the right to limit this? You can express your opinion but why do you think you know what’s best for everyone? I can only trust you know what is best for you. You are but a single voice - as much as anyone else.

Which lies and half truths do you acknowledge and which ones do you ignore or are oblivious to? Which ones are you victim to? You can’t possibly know. But it’s a rather big ask for me, more so the rest of people, to just take your word for it. No one is the authority or has the final say.

If your ideas are right then prove it or persuade people of it. It’s the only way. The other ways involve oppression and possibly violence. What if people decide that you’re just not viable anymore because of your ideas and just sort of publicly execute you as a warning? What happens when the classical liberal epistemology is thrown away because it is inconvenient? Are you SURE your side will be in control?

I'm not proposing any idea other than acting as if people are rational and not subject to manipulation is demonstrably madness.

I'm not arguing any course of action, merely pointing out that a course of action based on the idea that people are rational will not work, because they demonstrably are not.

I agree - people are probably not always rational and people are indeed subject to manipulation. But it changes nothing. If anything it’s BECAUSE of this that we need to agree all ideas are fallible and subject to debate and that no one owns the truth. An appeal to a fundamental authority cant work precisely because we are not rational and are subject to manipulation. We just don’t know. We have a right to opinion, beliefs, and debate but not much more. No one is above this. No one is an oracle.

The thought that came from The Enlightenment to philosophers like Karl Popper to modern authors like Johnathan Rausch explain this better than I can here. I’d read “Kindly Inquisitors” if you have a bit of time (pretty short overall) to get a better understanding of these ideas.

We have a series of liberal democracies in the West for a reason and it isn’t a fluke. Countless wars, inquisitions, and pointless suffering led to it. We are still struggling to fulfill the potential today and have to constantly fight off regressive philosophy but that’s the price.

The most impactful "ideas" in the current (social) media climate do not subscribe to any of your idea(l)s.

Pizzagate/QAnon, as examples, are not "subject to debate".

They are "oracular" in nature (there is a single source of "truth" ) and followers are expect to ... follow.

You can try to apply a Popperian approach to "controversial" or "conspiratorial" ideas, but the end result is that essentially always, such ideas fail to pass any credibility threshold.

But then people show in comment threads online, insisting that "not listening" to such ideas is inimical to the basics of free speech, and that nobody owns the truth.

These kinds of ideas have created a scenario in which nobody benefits, and in which truth, or more accurately perhaps, the pursuit of truth, suffers.

I don’t think you have to listen to them. More so, you have every right to ruthlessly mock those ideas and the people that propagate them if that’s how you want to counter it.

There’s a billion chain-letter bad ideas and rumors floating around. Who chooses which ones must be stopped and which ones ignored? The internet poses a problem in that yea, bad ideas flow faster. But I’d argue so do good ones. I think we need to take the lumps and learn the lessons and be better for it down the road.

Truth doesn't need an authority other than a standard, and sometimes it doesn't even need that.

For example, you have cancer. You may believe you don't, but you're going to die anyway. When you die, things have happened according to your truth and not your belief.

Now, if you accepted a belief on the basis of say, medical authority that you had cancer, you could have done things like chemo, etc. to prolong your life.

Either way, you're still going to die, the truth is unaffected. In this way, authorities and beliefs can be helpful. Or harmful if they aren't resulting in people benefiting. But they aren't synonymous with the truth.

This illustrates how there can be authorities and beliefs that are not beneficial, that they are incapable of modifying truth in any way, and if society is a group of people that stay together for mutual benefit, it benefits them to suppress harmful authorities and beliefs. How and to what extent is up to the society itself.

very well said. upvoted.

Thanks! An upvote for the enlightenment. :)

> The foundation of Liberalism (I’m not saying left wing here) is that no one owns knowledge

This is complete BS to begin with. "No one owns knowledge" is a typical ideological statement without any merits or proof. It is an idea that you want to believe, that is based on nothing factual.

Yes, you can have opinions. Tastes. Ideologies. Beliefs. And they could be true, or false, or changing, depending on where you are and how you look at it. They are all subjective.

However, there are things in this world that are neutral to opinions and stands the test of time. Facts that happened in the physical world and mathematical knowledge, are two examples of such objects. They are the truth. They are absolutely correct. There is no room for "disagreement" because they are not subjective opinions. They are facts that can't and won't be changed.

Math is always correct. 100% correct. From day 1 they are discovered / invented till forever. Explicit assumptions and theorems that followed by rigorous proof are absolutely correct. You can expand it later, you can discover more, you can enrich math. But as long as it is correct, it stands forever. Every single second you are using technologies based on mathematical knowledge that was proved thousands of years ago. They never failed, and will never fail.

Facts, in the physical world, are objective as well. You can argue whether a killer is a good person or not, or how good/bad he is, but you can't alter the fact if he did pull the trigger and killed someone. That is a fact.

Physics, based on a wider set of physical assumptions, can be viewed as close to truth, because they have stood the test of time by physical experiments and phenomena. There is a chance that they are not completely true and will be subsumed by more advanced theories, just like Newton's Laws, however, they are close approximations to reality. That's how we get the rockets into the space. By science.

Now comes to my point. You have the right to express your opinions, even if they are harsh criticisms. But you don't have the right to spread false information that can be proved false by facts. You don't have the right to spread lies. You don't have the right to say whatever you want, however you want it.

Why? Because statements against facts are false, are lies, and spreading lies can hurt and cost others' lives, sometimes millions or more. This is why there is law against spreading hate speech, against spreading extremist ideology against human race, against fraud and scams.

Free speech is about being free expressing your opinions within the framework. Outside these boundaries, your speech becomes a weapon that can hurt others and that is not allowed by law and society.

The fundamental rule in the society is simple. You have every right about yourself, but you don't have the right to hurt others.

Yeah I agree mainly. But I disagree that anything, even math, is infallible. Anything and everything can be challenged and the person doing this shouldn’t be killed or jailed, etc. They can have their ideas challenged and refuted and made an ass of though. There’s no guarantees that your ideas will be gently excused. So you ought to have some great evidence if you believe something commonly agreed to be factual is not.

The framework of liberalism - the very system that allows math and science to thrive - is that their is no authority. There is no plea to humanitarian feelings or egalitarianism that makes things right because they feel right. Ideas are free and freely challenged. Anyone can argue 2+2=5 but I doubt they’ll go far with it.

You could say almost anything in Spain but if you spread blasphemy you would be killed because it was sacred and the word of God. Is this what you want? Those people felt just as right and righteous as you and we both probably agree they were wrong. It always leads to violence.

That these facts inhere in the physical world (and I don't disagree) does not directly correspond to the beliefs of the individuals living in said world. Language exists and is the vehicle used to transmit beliefs about facts.

This is why we speak of proof in the first place. The fact that person A died at another's hands does not directly correspond to the belief held by an individual that person X was the killer. This is why we have "beyond reasonable doubt" as a legal evidentiary standard.

I agree that factual axiomatic truths exist in the physical world and are evident to individuals as factual axiomatic truth. The problem is communicating these as such without granting license to counterfeits.

The most successful form thus far has been to let the facts speak for themselves to individuals as factual axiomatic truths.

The least successful has been to establish unassailable dogma concerning what is and is not factual.

The certainty that you and others present concerning your set of beliefs-as-facts-themselves is of the same species as other true believers throughout history. Historically, this has led to the suppression of the scientific method and an open society in favor of a prelatical and clerical class that determines by edict what truth is, often solely at the behest of the hegemonic power and not factual axiomatic truth.

This is why it is preferable to have minimal rather than maximal control over the exchange of ideas concerning the nature of what constitutes a fact, let alone what those facts actually are.