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Comment by agalunar | Hacker News Reader

I've seen instances of wealthy or powerful individuals publicly calling for private platforms to deregulate speech not because of a dedication to the ideals of free speech (the ostensible reason) but as a tactic to achieve some political goal, e.g. in order to promote confusion about anthropogenic climate change to benefit the fossil fuel industry.

I've also seen instances of individuals defending free speech because they hold unpopular (or sometimes even hurtful) opinions and want to be taken seriously, or want a megaphone – both of which they are free to demand but which no one is obligated to give them.

I signed the MIT Free Speech Alliance's petition and signed up for its newsletter because I agree with the aims of the movement, but I had the impression that some of the alumni leading the alliance have political motives, or are less angry about the loss of freedom at universities [1] than they are about the social opinions of the rising generation, which worries me somewhat.

[1] which IMO ought to be the paragons of free speech.

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> I've also seen instances of individuals defending free speech because they hold unpopular (or sometimes even hurtful) opinions

Well, popular opinion needs no protections.

Sure they do, if the people in power have minority opinions.

Tell that to Iranians...

Ignoring the abhorrent treatment of women in Iran, using the current protest as a measure of popularity would be as faulty as using the Occupy Wall Street protests as a measure of popularity, or in Canada, the Convoy Protests.

Unfortunately, as far as most of what I can find on the subject, most Iranians (who live in Iran) are either indifferent or opposed to the people currently protesting in Iran and Iran has a majority population that is highly religious and loyal to the current government.

It's mostly in the big cities, like Tehran or Shiraz where the protests enjoy support and the population is more liberal, but outside of the big cities in more rural areas people are much more religious and supportive of the regime.

I am certainly welcome to be corrected on this though.

I don't think it's unlikely that there's more people in the big cities in Iran than there are outside, and that the people inside those cities should get laws that they agree with, well, even if the people outside the cities disagree with them

Hard to analyze true intent when people are being killed for expressing them selves

True! I was just pointing out that this is different from defending free speech; it's simply wanting people to listen to you. (And so it may be deceptive to claim your goal is free speech when, in reality, you will only fight for free speech while your opinion is the unpopular one.)

Mind you, those opinions are held by the powerful, who's opinions also need no protection.

The unpowerful, unpopular ideas don't even get calls for protection

If the powerful have no protections then they won’t be the powerful for long and then the shoe will be on the other foot and a new powerful elite will be created (ostensibly what is happening right now as a certain group of elite have largely taken control of both the media system and the school system).

Care to share who that certain elite group is?

A billion to one, it’s new money

Free speech as a concept means that the unpowerful, unpopular ideas are protected by the same laws that protect powerful unpopular ideas. If you want to protect only the latter, you need to convince your culture that they want free political speech with exceptions. The whole point of lumping all speech together for the purposes of making it free is that the powerful can't make exceptions. Once you've said one kind of speech is coming from "the powerful," you've said that they are the ones deciding which ideas get to be exceptions! Surely we know better than to give the powerful more power as a means of protecting the powerless from them. Is it not contradictory to imagine that "the powerful" will not write these laws and decide how they are interpreted and enforced, when their ability to do those things is the definition of the set we, in this thought experiment, identify them as?

In fact, the point you are making about unequal protection under imbalances of power is perhaps even an argument for maintaining an absolutist stance against reasonable exceptions - because that's an effective tactic for protecting something in a flawed political world that can turn those exceptions into things you didn't imagine when voicing support for them.

The "Free Speech" movement started on American campuses as a reaction to the red scare. At the core it was anti-war and a lot of college students who wanted to talk about the little red book without ending up on a list. College students died in some of these protests

Kinda similarly, the "right to bear arms" interpretation of the 2nd amendment didn't really happen until the Black Panthers. Everybody talks about the "right to bear arms" part of the amendment but for some reason we no longer bring up how that sentence starts: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State"

It's kind of a confusing amendment in general. For most of it's history it was basically treated like 3rd Amendment (about soldiers not having to be quartered). It seemed kinda odd and in fact was the second least often cited amendment behind the 3rd amendment because of this.

It was actually the Black Panthers, a bunch of young hip highly educated commies (mostly), that strongly pushed for this interpretation.

Both "right to bear arms" and "free speech" are much more recent in American politics/history than most people realize. Yes the original amendments had those words, but the meanings of them weren't really hashed out until rather recently.

Your interpretation of this is pretty popular today, but is completely historically false on both the first and second amendments.

On the second, privately owned ordnance weapons and warships were extremely common in the 1800s, and the definition of "well-regulated" was closer to "well-equipped" than to the modern word "regulated." In fact, the earliest "gun control" laws were about when and where you could fire your cannons. It took until the really 1920s to start thinking of the second amendment as a "collective" right which allowed any restrictions.

On the first amendment, it has been under societal attack since the founding of the country. The laws against sedition were some of the first laws ever passed, and were an attack on speech. In the early 1900s, it was all about preventing protests from labor groups and women who wanted to vote. The red scare was a very recent instance. Thankfully, the judiciary, since 1800, has been very good at striking down governmental attempts to control speech, and created the strongest legal regime around free speech that has ever existed. This regime had its last great test with the red scare. Twitter-FBI "state-informed" moderation and these ridiculous speech codes are just another attempt, in a 200 year old tradition, of the powerful to control other people's speech.

You are looking at a narrow slice of American history and generalizing from it. The whole history of the country is quite encouraging in terms of the rights of the individual, and I think we will see a turnaround on the current situation around speech, as we have every other time.

Meet the new puritans, same as the old puritans.

You interpretation of history is also false - there was no more consensus on the meaning of the Amendments then than there is today.

By "pretty popular" you must mean the majority of historians, right? Here's Britannica's take:

> Despite the Supreme Court’s rulings in Heller and McDonald, many constitutional historians disagreed with the court that the Second Amendment protected an individual right to “keep and bear Arms” for the purpose of self-defense in the home. Indeed, for more than two centuries there had been a consensus among judges as well as scholars that the Second Amendment guaranteed only the right of individuals to defend their liberties by participating in a state militia. However, by the late 20th century the “self-defense” interpretation of the amendment had been adopted by a significant minority of judges.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Second-Amendment/Origins-an...

It was certainly the popular consensus view among historians (registering about 95% democrat) at the time of Heller, but that does not in any way mean that it is or was the consensus view of notable legal scholars, Supreme Court justices, or anyone else who is actually well-informed on the issues and history of the second amendment. And also facts, which matter a lot more than "consensus."

If you would like to back up your argument from authority with actual evidence, can you pull out a gun control law from before 1900 that bans anything close to the weapons that are banned today?

sure, but first can you pull up a law from before 1900 regulating social media?

> the popular consensus view among historians (registering about 95% democrat)

Can you address the claims with facts and reason? Resorting to ad hominen attacks seems to indicate the facts and reason are lacking.

> the judiciary, since 1800, has been very good at striking down governmental attempts to control speech

I'm not sure that's true. The record is mixed, afaik. For example, political repression of the left has been repeatedly allowed.

> Twitter-FBI "state-informed" moderation

AFAIK, the evidence amounted to very little or nothing happening in that regard?

Where can I read about the Black Panthers starting the contemporary Second Amendment movements? As I'm sure you know, it's an especially right wing movement.

There is often a wide gap between a popular opinion, perhaps softly or unspoken, and what is widely accepted and popular expression. Often popular opinions have few protections, and it leads to double-speak and coded or indirect language. Assuming that what is freely expressed is a reflection of popular opinion can lead to important misunderstandings.

It is entirely normal and correct that a free society harbors many diverse and even rancorously disagreeing and opposed political agendas.

Of course we disagree with our political opponents and feel that the policies they advocate are not optimal. It might be convenient to your politics if your opposition’s voice is dampened, but your opposition feels the same of your voice and does so for reasons no less sincere than your own.

That’s the fundamental bargain. You are neither obligated to hand anyone a megaphone, nor obligated to confiscate theirs.

Agreed!

Your comment has made me realize that I could have written my original comment more clearly; my dissatisfaction in re the MIT Free Speech Alliance (if my impression was accurate) isn't about political agendas, but about deception – promoting free speech for the moment as a tactic rather than out of a dedication to the ideal, while claiming the latter.

Indeed, when people say "let's keep politics out of it", they're in effect trying to quell any challenge to the status quo, which arguably is inherently political, and this should probably be called out more often.

For sure. E.g., MLK was seen as outrageously political for challenging a status quo that in retrospect we can see as obviously political ("let's use state violence and unequal treatment to oppress black people").

"You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations." From "Letter from a Birmingham Jail", which everyone should read: https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham....

> Indeed, when people say "let's keep politics out of it", they're in effect trying to quell any challenge to the status quo, which arguably is inherently political, and this should probably be called out more often.

This is a pretty uncharitable take, and one that I see too often.

I could just as easily say that people pressure others into turning every space political because they feel entitled to dominate every space with their politics, and they cannot tolerate any kind of truce or neutral ground. It's just another tactic to control the conversation.

> I could just as easily say...

And I think you're right! It seems very likely to me that that happens.

Playing devil's advocate for myself, however: the comment was not uncharitable because it did not attribute intent. Someone saying "let's keep politics out of it" may be trying to avoid conflict or simply be respectful, but unknowingly in effect quashing challenges to the status quo.

The comment was meant to be an observation of unwitting outcomes rather than secret intentions, but maybe that's in fact what you're objecting to ("it's easy to be pessimistic about the aggregate effects of small, inoccuous actions, and that attitude deserves some pushback").

Your last paragraph reminds me of a line of thought I once had:

Libertarianism works better without libertarians. It works better with collectivists than individualists. It works better with people who care about other people's freedoms than with those who care about their own freedoms.

Freedom of speech as a negative liberty means that the government does not criminalize speech. Some people would like to extend that to other powerful entities banning / limiting speech, but then the government would be suppressing those entities' other liberties.

The freedom of speech people care about is a positive liberty. It's about being entitled to have a platform for your speech. Maybe even a platform with an audience, or a platform you feel safe to use. In order for your opponents to have freedom of speech – a platform – your liberties must be suppressed. Either by an authority by force, or by yourself voluntarily.

Ultimately, freedom of speech is about you being obligated not to confiscate the megaphone.

Exactly. I’d rewrite that last paragraph as: You are neither obligated to hand anyone a megaphone, nor [delete: obligated] permitted to confiscate theirs.

I believe this is exactly the equivocation that GP was talking about. Your rewrite is nice to hear, but paradoxical.

I don’t see the paradox. I don’t have to give you a megaphone, but if you have one, I’m not allowed to take it from you.

What’s the paradox there?

It's a curious analogy because in many contexts, use of a megaphone is quite abusive warranting confiscation.

If I attend a political rally and the speaker uses a megaphone, that's fine, I have consented to it's use.

However other places I have witnessed their use has questionable legality due to breach of the peace because the audience has not consented e.g. getting heckled when entering a University site or getting assailed by someone promoting their batshit Christian cult when trying to do some shopping. I don't think anyone would assume a universal right to make unwanted amplified noise.

I have always assumed the megaphone to be figurative: a platform for publication, reach on Twitter, media advertising, etc.

"megaphone"

The megaphone analogy is limited in applicability. It only applies where the recipient never opted to hear the message, but it is forced upon them.

Free speech issues are about interfering with speech where there is a willing audience. Even in cases where someone is offended by a message, often it's not that they don't want to hear the message; it's that they don't want others to hear the message.

> "I've also seen instances of individuals defending free speech because they hold unpopular (or sometimes even hurtful) opinions and want to be taken seriously, or want a megaphone – both of which they are free to demand but which no one is obligated to give them."

Convenient that we're only doing that because "we have unpopular opinions". But did it ever occur to you that they're unpopular because we're not allowed to speak our minds fully and rationally convince others of our ideas' merits?

The observation has nothing to do with the correctness or goodness of the opinion. The intention of the comment was to point out that this is different from defending free speech; it's simply wanting people to listen to you. (And I don't think that's inherently a wrong desire!)

> But did it ever occur to you that they're unpopular because we're not allowed to speak our minds fully and rationally convince others of our ideas' merits?

Bold claims have a heavy burden of proof. One could quickly retort with the opposite, i.e. perhaps they are unpopular because they have been refuted many times but the proponents believe the 97th time will be the charm. Who's right?

It's possible, but if, say, pro-pinapple speech and reesearch is effectively and heavily suppressed, then even if the lone nutters who are pro-pinapple (and you'd have to be a bit of a nutter to be pro-pinapple in an anti-pinapple world, both due to lack of exposure to anti-pinapple resources and for social reasons) speak up they are probably not going to make a good case, not having had the opportunity to explore the idea with a large number of different people helping them figure out the arguments and doing the experiments.

That retort does not work when the suggested policies work every single time as promised when they have been implemented and their primary reason for failure is that they have been made illegal and brought to court.

Also, the refutals that supposedly make them unpopular seemingly have no impact in reality. That kind of suggests that either the models used for refutal are grossly incomplete or big errors have been made due to political reasoning.

If you believe you have the best ideas with the best evidence backing them and find you can’t reach and convince people with the plethora of modern communications tools, I’d spend at least as much time examining possible faults in your beliefs as I would the possible faults in communications.

> But did it ever occur to you that they're unpopular because we're not allowed to speak our minds fully and rationally convince others of our ideas' merits?

Notwithstanding my ignorance of the particular unpopular opinion you hold, did it ever occur to you that no matter how fully you express your mind, and no matter how rationally you believe your points, the popular resistance to your unpopular ideas may simply be proof that they do not have merit?

If history shows us anything it’s that intelligent people can become convinced by unintelligent ideas.

History has also shown us, that it doesn't matter how many people say you're wrong, you could be right. In fact, this is usually how major progress was made in science.

The whole "popular opinion" game is very one-sided from the start, especially in a setting where only a few people have immediate access to reach others like today. I've seen popular, but ultimately wrong, news travel around and solidify often enough to conclude, at least for myself, that "resistance to your unpopular ideas" is not sufficient to make any statement about its quality.

Do you think the flat earthers might be proved right some day?

Given the information currently available, probably not, but that doesn't mean they should be silenced.

Does that mean their speech should be considered equally authoritative as those whose model of the earth's shape you prefer?

The entire point is that popularity is not a relevant factor in this decision.

After all both opinions are or were popular so which one are we supposed to pick among the popular options?

Given all information that has ever been observable, absolutely not… and while that doesn’t mean they should be silenced, it absolutely means they shouldn’t be allowed to present their idiot ideas as facts, absent opposition and loud disclaim.

People are free to hold stupid ideas, and they’re free to state those ideas in public, and the rest of us are free to jeer them for doing so… freedom of speech does not imply freedom from being laughed at and abused for holding on to such manifestly stupid ideas.

That’s just it: I believe they must be allowed to present their (manifestly stupid) ideas as facts. The rest of us must also be allowed to present evidence and data to prove their ideas are wrong, but they have to, in moments and mediums they choose, be able to say “yup, the earth is definitely flat.”

Not to their children, or to anyone else’s, in any context in which there isn’t an overwhelming voice of opposition always present. Allowing someone infected with stupidity to willfully infect those who cannot consent in an informed manner is unethical in the extreme.

Are you proposing that we interfere with parents teaching their children their beliefs? That is more unethical and fraught with peril than the alternative, IMO.

If someone believes in a powerful sky wizard who oversees all of humanity, they can teach their children of this magical being. They can even take them once a week to a place of education about this belief. IMO, it’s none of my or your business or right to be constantly present to present alternative points of view.

In every part of the world that has developed public education standards the public good already interferes with parents teaching kids their beliefs about physics, math, basic world history, economics, etc, and for a very good and entirely ethical reason… a basically functioning and employable human being must be capable of basic arithmetic and the usage of technology that rises above simple machines in order to survive within a modern society. That’s why home-schooled children raised to hold their parents non-falsifiable beliefs — ie belief in particular sky wizard(s) — still have to be able to pass qualification tests that demonstrate that they have sufficient exposure to the facts that belie their falsifiable ones — ie belief that they live on a constantly accelerating disk, possibly atop elephants and a turtle — to at least handle the minimum cognitive dissonance required to both actually live on an oblate spheroid around which satellites travel and promote their parents’ fictional ideas using technology that depends in its entirety on the entirely self-evident and easily observable fact that the world isn’t flat.

Personally I’d go further… teaching children that the world is flat should be considered criminal child abuse, as you’re intentionally impairing a child’s ability to function in any society, including your own echo chamber.

I don’t mind (and in fact come close to insisting that we) have adequate public education to help mold our future society members.

What I do object to is insisting that there is never a time when parents can teach their children arbitrary topic X without always having someone from the societal ministry of truth to be there to fact-check/align it.

Depends in its entirety on the specifics of arbitrary topic X… for instance, if X involves putting ethic group Y in to gas chambers, then send in the ministry, post haste.

This does go both ways, doesn't it? Especially since a ministry was the main proponent of putting people into gas chambers once. They even killed anyone that would advocate for peace or provide help in this case.

There seems to be a significant power imbalance between the ministry and a parent.

That particular ministry was, of course, composed of those who’d been infected by rightly unpopular ideas that were allowed to grow and fester until the Overton Window had shifted to the far right, encouraged by parents and not sufficiently discouraged by the state.

A state of affairs that’s now pretty much been replicated, about a century after we first tried to learn the lesson that Fascism is a bad idea.

Should we lock parents up for "abusing" children because they lie about the existence of Santa Claus too? Or do you think it's possible that those children might grow up one day and become capable of forming their own conclusion in whether Santa exists or not?

If you're answer to that question is, "no, because those children were abused by others lying about Santa, they will never be capable of overcoming that lie and will continue to propagate that lie" then it begs the question: what right does anyone have to tell anyone anything since all of us have experienced some sort of indoctrination at some point? Are we not all "broken" in that sense?

Amen.

No, that isn't necessary, apparently all you need is propaganda. Once everyone believes it, you don't need to prove anything according to yawpitch.

Given the number of unusual beliefs we have today (e.g. equality, areligiosity), popularity seems like a very bad proxy for truth.

Those are, indeed, historically unusual beliefs… though the rise in their popularity being directly coincident with the spread of more-than-minimal literacy and the slow degradation of traditional and institutional obstacles to higher education does imply that inequality and religiosity are even worse proxies for “truth”.

>the popular resistance to your unpopular ideas may simply be proof that they do not have merit?

No matter how many people believe the earth is flat or the sun circles around the earth, it won't make it true. We have day and night cycles because earth is a sphere that is rotating so that only one side of earth is exposed at the same time.

No matter how unpopular this opinion is and no matter how big the mob's desire to lynch me is, it is still closer to the truth than the potentially popular opinion of earth being flat and the sun circling around the planet.

In all the thousands of years of recorded human history there has never been a time where you could find enough people who actually believe the Earth is flat to fill a room sufficiently large to constitute “popular” opinion.

That is, not until after the advent of the Internet and YouTube… both of which, ironically, depend on the Earth being non-flat to function.

Sheesh it entirely works both ways. 70 years ago most didn’t want to hear about equal rights for homosexuals. But after 70 years of discussion, celebrity, pop culture, expiration of the issue, society has basically done a 180.

The Majority is very often simply wrong.

In fact is, look at all progressive movements (those that you’d have to be pretty insane to dispute today). They all began with the majority opposing them. Women’s suffrage, civil rights, homosexual rights, etc.

Each of the movements responsible for those achievements went directly against the grain. You were crazy to side with any of those at certain dates in the past.

The most fascinating part is to think which movements haven’t occurred yet. Which topics are we all collectively wrong about. Whatever they are it’s the first amendment that will enable them to be rectified.

I have many ideas what these will turn out to be, but that’s another topic.

I have seen very very good arguments that climate change is happening, but human's impact on it is most likely miniscule.

If this is the indeed the truth, then the trillions we currently invest in "reversing man made climate change" would be better invested in "preparing for the inevitable".

Even if powerful people rally for free speech in order to achieve an (maybe evil) political goal, THATS OBVIOUSLY BETTER THAN using censorship to achieve a (probably evil) political goal.

I find it unbelievable that this is such a hard concept to grasp.

If powerful people use free speech to spread nonsense, then just present your counter arguments, god damnit.

I know that it "takes more time to refute bullshit than to produce bullshit", sadly, that's just how it is. The bitcoin community has spent more than 12 years now to refute bullshit and people still fall for all the debunked FUD. This just means that we need a better tool to refute bullshit faster and more efficiently.

Wikipedia was a good first try, but of course since it succumbed to the woke mind virus, it is no longer viable.

There is a civilisation altering opportunity here to produce a new tool like it. I don't know how such a tool would look like.

> I have seen very very good arguments that climate change is happening, but human's impact on it is most likely miniscule.

How do you know it's not disinformation? My understanding, from many years of reading, is that those questions were settled long ago and there is not even somehwat evidence or arguments.

> The bitcoin community has spent more than 12 years now to refute bullshit and people still fall for all the debunked FUD.

Cryptocurrencies are an example of credible, true information?

> woke mind virus

Pejoritives are a signal that there are no facts or reason to support the claim.

The next twist of free speech is trying to distinguish between "real" speech and shills (and worse, bots). If you allow free speech on your platform, do you allow freedom of dishonest speech? Do you allow freedom of automated speech? If you do, you won't have a platform that humans care about.

> both of which they are free to demand but which no one is obligated to give them.

I think the university is trying to find a middle ground here: The university - as institution and administrative body - is acting as the entity that "gives free speech to them" here: They are permitting those arguments be made in public events, on flyers, posters, etc. Of course they can't force students to listen to that speech. So I'd imagine that calls to boycott certain classes still remain valid. However, what they do is forbidding people from blocking others from listening, e.g. by demanding that certain people don't speak at all, blocking entrances to lecture halls, etc. That seems like a reasonable approach to me.

More generally: I've seen the "free speech does not apply to private entities/free speech is no right to be listened to/free speech is not freedom from consequences" arguments online a lot - they seem to be the standard counter arguments of some groups - and I've always found them deeply problematic.

First of all, I think there are a lot of authoritarian states who would be more than happy to adopt the "public only" definition of free speech without any substantial loss of control: "Yes of course, dear dissident, you're perfectly in your legal rights to accuse me of human rights violations on your website. But I'm afraid, I won't be able to help you if the country's ISP makes a private decision to block your site, if your employer spontaneously exercises its right to fire you the next day and if a crowd of concerned private citizens with privately-owned baseball bats will gather in front of your house tonight. Consequences!"

Secondly, the arguments rely on a situation where most services that faciliate discussion in a society - i.e. the media sector - are provided by private companies and are not subject to democratic decision making. So basically they rely on a weak state. That's originally a right-libertarian vision of society and I don't think anyone who calls themselves "left" should be comfortable adopting that vision.

> That's originally a right-libertarian vision of society and I don't think anyone who calls themselves "left" should be comfortable adopting that vision.

Indeed, but right leaning libertarianism with a weak state is where conservatives have been leading the country for decades. Now it’s the right leaning libertarians like the Freedom Caucus who are are the loudest that private platforms should be forced to carry certain speech, which is what they’ve been fighting against this whole time (at least if you take them at their word).

I don’t think many leftists are arguing that the status quo is okay. At least what I’ve argued is that today it’s wrong to force Twitter or any private entity to carry speech they don’t want to. By doing so I’m not adopting a right-leaning libertarian worldview, because that doesn’t preclude public options that would carry all speech.

IMO you’re being conned.

Universities are agency normalizing agents of government.

We’re not talking launching some professor from a cannon but doing as humans have done for years and updating colloquial language models. This is freaking out the establishment as it does and has, and of course the establishment labels it as anti-freedom to teach them anything, because of course it’s the establishment; it teaches us not the other way around!

MIT is like a rack of Twitter servers; we could unplug it and society will keep going because it’s not immutably reliant on society. Many thousands of workers are though and only “essential workers” have an obligation to output real results.

Also in the Soviet Union most people publishing and spreading unsanctioned works, did so because they did not propagate the blessed and (therefore) popular views of the party. How strange.

If you don't have any unpopular opinions you're not a very interesting person. And if you can't even argue as a devil's advocate for the other side, you're not a very skilled thinker. And institutions that don't foster and protect divergent thinkers do not produce interesting science or engineering.

There are loads of people who I find interesting because of their accomplishments, skills, expertise, or life experiences.

For most people, another person doesn’t need to be contrarian to be interesting.

> For most people, another person doesn’t need to be contrarian to be interesting.

I’d go one further and say that contrarians are intrinsically uninteresting. They are very predictable and tedious in their inability to accept ideas just because they are accepted by others. Being systematically opposed to ideas because they are perceived as mainstream is just as much of a fallacious reasoning than the other way around.

If someone is a contrarian for the sake of being contrarian, I tend to agree.

“Having contrary opinions” and “being a contrarian” are as similar as “having a glass of milk” and “being a cow”.

It’s not about contrarian opinions, it’s about contrarian people. I thought the quoted sentence was obvious.

Denying climate change is a very popular opinion.

In specific circles, maybe

Among politicians, for example.

See the other reply to my comment… didn't take long for a denier to come out.

They didn't deny anything. They stated that the issue isn't so black and white as you'd like it to be. You responded in kind by simply labeling them a "denier" even though nowhere in their response did they deny anything.

There are perfectly acceptable, even scientific arguments against CO2-induced climate change theory. Not only that, but even if we accept the premise that CO2 is inducing climate change, we can debate about to what degree, and whether or not it is "an existential crisis" as some have argued. Further still, if we accept that it's a crisis, we can also debate on the trade-offs civilization should make in order to contend with it. All of those positions should be perfectly acceptable to take up. We do not know with anywhere close to 100% confidence what the climate will do over the next few decades. It is a non-linear, dynamic, chaotic system that by definition becomes exponentially unpredictable as a function of time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory

I love a good strongman argument over strawman any days

Institutions are intentional normalizers. That’s the definition of the word “institution”; an entity that exists to service an idea. To build consensus around its attributes and parameters.

Corporations normalize utilitarian agency. Government social policing. University thinking.

Institutions never produced interesting science or engineering; people did. Institutions took all the credit.

> If you don't have any unpopular opinions you're not a very interesting person

Except that there are many types of unpopularity that you have conflated.

Having intolerant views about trans people for example does not in my opinion make you interesting.

It just makes you intolerant.

The problem is that being justifiably critical of laws and policies that eradicate female-only spaces is now being framed as a bigoted and intolerant anti-trans viewpoint, and this reframing is being used to suppress such critical speech.

> intolerant views about trans people

Unfortunately, those are nowhere near universally unpopular views at this point in our human journey.

> Having intolerant views about trans people for example does not in my opinion make you interesting. It just makes you intolerant.

Sure, if both parties already agree on the meaning of "intolerance", but what qualifies as intolerance is exactly the dispute.

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