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Comment by Cookingboy | Hacker News Reader

>I still wish you can express your views all over the internet without the risk of being cancelled.

I don't, especially if me spreading nonsense directly causes harm to a large number of people and the society. I do not believe my unlimited free speech rights is of higher priority the health and wellbeing of the overall society.

The whole "individual rights always triumphs over the interest of the society" is exactly the type of American exceptionalism I mentioned. It's a very strange notion in many cultures (and no doubt you'd say those cultures are inferior) and it's more or less another symptom of a culture that worships narcissistic behavior.

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You are just one guy in the Internet, relax, dont give yourself too much importance. While people fight to stop the "tin-foil brigade" to have their loony youtube channels, they enshrine Hollywood actors, Silicon Valley neo-barons and politicians, whose opinions are ACTUALLY dangerous and influential, and yet none of them will be cancelled.isnt it curious?

The whole point of my comment is I am not important, and neither are you, so both of us should shut up if our speech materially hurt the society.

> Silicon Valley neo-barons and politicians, whose opinions are ACTUALLY dangerous and influential, and yet none of them will be cancelled.isnt it curious?

I see you failed on reading comprehension. They should be cancelled if they are proven to be dangerous to the society, such as anti-mask movement or anti-vaccine movement. I don't know why you are trying to trivialize "tin-foil brigade" when it literally killed many people this year.

> I am not important, and neither are you, so both of us should shut up if our speech materially hurt the society.

That's an oxymoron, if we are irrelevant we then dont have the power nor the audience to affect society in a grand scale.

> I see you failed on reading comprehension.

Nice try.

> They should be cancelled if they are proven to be dangerous to the society, such as anti-mask movement or anti-vaccine movement

And yet they are free as a bird. From Jim Carrey to Boris Johnson, from Jack Dorsey to Elon Musk, from Mark Zuckerberg to Alysa Milano, they have spouted absolutely nonsense and they are as influential as ever.They should not be banned btw, but ridiculed.Alex Jones deserves the same treatment and not being hypocritically swept under the rug.

> I don't know why you are trying to trivialize "tin-foil brigade" when it literally killed many people this year.

This a global pandemic, a big portion of the deaths was sadly unavoidable no matter your location in the map or your political persuasion, it is juicy ammunition for political gains though. The other big part in the deaths comes from the clusterfuck of mismanagement of the crisis. The people responsible for that WILL NOT be cancelled. The influence of the loonies in their youtube channels represents at worst a minuscule fraction of the deaths.

> They should be cancelled if they are proven to be dangerous to the society

“Proven” by who? You?

No thanks.

Way to make up strawman's argument.

Do you agree that there are objective facts that should be accepted by the society for the well being of the society? Such as Earth is not flat, vaccine does not cause autism, and wearing a mask is helpful at preventing Covid spread?

If you do not believe such object facts exist, then we do not live in the same reality, if you do, then there must be some mechanism that raises certain statements into the status of "facts", and that's the same kind of mechanism we should apply.

> Way to make up strawman's argument.

Please explain what you think I’m strawmanning. If you demand that certain topics be banned from discussion, you must explain, as a matter of implementation, who gets to decide what is banned.

> Do you agree that there are objective facts that should be accepted by the society

What, concretely, do you mean by "should be accepted by the society"? To use an extreme but historically common example, does it mean that people should be executed for having different beliefs? You need to be more specific.

> If you do not believe such object facts exist

I do believe the Earth is round. I do believe it’s a fact. I don’t believe people should be banned (or worse) because they think otherwise.

In fact, flat Earth theories are interesting, because they challenge my assumptions and ultimately clarify my understanding of the subject.

This is why freedom of speech and the free exchange of ideas is so important: It is the only mechanism by which we can correct our own epistemology and keep it in check, both at the individual and at the societal level!

> there must be some mechanism that raises certain statements into the status of "facts"

Sure. What does this have to do with censorship, though? The topic of discussion was policy, i.e. what is to be imposed on other people.

Wow you are not even discussing in good faith anymore.

Where did I say discussion of certain topics should be banned? Where did I say people should be killed for believing different things? It’s literally strawman after strawman from you.

> you must explain, as a matter of implementation, who gets to decide what is banned.

No I don’t. I pointed out a problem, but I am not suggesting solutions, and I sure as hell don’t owe you an implementation.

> Where did I say discussion of certain topics should be banned?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24797649

> Do you agree that there are objective facts that should be accepted by the society for the well being of the society?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24795296

> They should be cancelled if they are proven to be dangerous to the society

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24795078

> I do not believe my unlimited free speech rights is of higher priority the health and wellbeing of the overall society.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24793340

> The whole "absolute free speech is a sacrosanct human rights for everyone" is an ideal that simply would not scale with the 21st century civilization.

> But we can all agree that freedom isn't free, at one point in the future the cost would be so high that the whole civilization would be facing a "give me freedom or give me death" moment.

Feel free to clarify what you meant, which is precisely what I was asking about.

> Where did I say people should be killed for believing different things?

I explicitly said that was an example, not something you specifically said.

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