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Comment by ecshafer | Hacker News Reader

I disagree with this idea, that we are talking about Free Speech Rights. When I see people say Free Speech, it is in the lens of the inalienable right that we all have. The US constitution does protect some specific scope of Free Speech, but any limitations legally are still infringements upon the Natural Right of Free Speech. Rights do not come from the Government, they are innate and natural. The government can merely infringe or protect those rights. A company or government infringing on those rights is unethical, because infringing upon any other's rights is unethical, regardless of what the US government says.

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That interpretation of rights is not universal and in my experience seems to be a philosophy mainly coming from the US (presumably reinforced by the language in the American bill of rights). I view rights as describing the actual (implicit or explicit) contract between a people and their government, not as an absolute metaphysical or moral concept. In my view, a person in a developed nation has a stronger right to clean water than a person in an impoverished nation as statement of fact observable from the effort their government goes to to ensure they have clean water. I prefer this view of rights divorced from morals because it lets a population pressure their government for rights based on what they want rather than getting bogged down on whether it is morally right to e.g. have access to guns or silence in criminal proceedings.

> Rights do not come from the Government, they are innate and natural.

I don't understand this philosophy. Who decides these rights? Wouldn't whatever rights that you consider to be innate and natural be the ones important through your own cultural lens? Isn't it possible others disagree with what rights one should be granted?

You’re missing the entire point and it’s important because it was completely novel at the time and still is really. It has nothing to do with the particular rights that our founders believed to be natural. But the idea that they aren’t granted by a government. That government can only infringe on rights, not grant them and take them away, etc. like kings did forever or even today even in many western countries where the rights are limited.

What differentiates "rights" from the pure freedom to do anything we are physically/mentally/emotionally capable of? That seems like government (of any size, e.g. a tribal council) introducing law into chaos. I'm not sure how one differentiates a government preventing murder and inhibiting speech with that definition.

You’re over thinking it and also missing the point. Again it’s not about the output so much as the concept.

You’re making a vapid argument to try and confront a profound idea.

It's making demands of the natural world that the natural world doesn't have to obey. These natural rights are only that way because specific groups of people agree on them, making them unnatural, or, as I said previously, it implies that absolute freedom is your natural right. If that's not the case I'd ask you to explain where natural rights end and chaos begins.

Where people agree it’s self evident.

So neither innate or natural because it requires a culture to agree. We're on the same page.

This is an innate aspect of philosophy. You’d have to go history diving to whoever came up with the idea first but it probably originated around the time of the renaissance or Greek or Roman philosophers.

Yeah, it's been considered for a long time, I think first suggested by the stoics, but that's still western culture.

The Arabs invented our number system. If it’s invented far enough back it spreads globally.

I don't know that's a great example given that many cultures don't share those numerals, so it can't be assumed these ideas propagate solely by the virtue of being old.

What culture that's developed enough to control a nation state doesn't use those numerals? Many cultures have alternative numerals that are in use, but usually only in informal usage.

China? They didn't adopt Arabic numerals until the 17th century after it was introduced by Europeans, and there's no way to argue they weren't a nation state before that.

In general this development is synonymous with the development of orthodoxy and heresy in late antiquity - it's not enough to believe what you want to believe, but to insist that everyone else believe it too.

The template works like this, create a set of ideas, but cast them as having been part of the fabric of reality itself. This can happen intentionally or organically. Organic development is as simple as raising kiddos with the same belief. The way that socialization and mental development happens us that it makes these truths appear as normal and obvious as apples are red.

Are rights obvious and self evident? Congrats you've been born and socialized in the west. Is the mandate of heaven obvious and self evident? Congrats, you were born in China a millennia ago.

How can a right possibly be innate and natural?

As in, what mechanisms binds what you think rights are (what do you think rights are?) to the laws that govern the natural world?

It's natural in the sense that you have it if you are the only person on an island somewhere, assuming there's no aircraft or satellites going overhead. In that situation you could literally say anything you wanted, as long as you can collect food and water and not die of some other cause before you finish saying it. Kind of goes for other things to a lesser extent, for example you have total privacy and there's no one there to take away any guns you have, but you do have to think about other people more in those cases, as the island thing is just a thought exercise.

Sound like you're defining "rights" along the lines of "what you can do in isolation, as long as it doesn't affect anyone else". Does that seem correct?

I think that's how most people define natural rights unless they want to invoke some sort of creator.

I don't see how what man can do away from everything and everyone should have any relevance to what man should be allowed to do in a society

What's the logic there?

Yeah that's where everything gets complicated, obviously people's natural rights can conflict and that's where you need to set up some sort of rules based system, but the point is that you don't infringe on someone's natural rights unless there's a direct conflict with someone else's natural rights. For example your natural rights to bear a weapon cause a conflict if you are bearing them in someone's house in order to rob them after you just broke in. Conflicts with their right to have property, etc.

That's not what I meant

It seems like your position is "natural rights should guide or at least influence societal rights", and you consider that to be self-evident or maybe axiomatic

I don't see why natural rights would be part of the discussion altogether

They are natural in that you have them by virtue of existing; if you were alone on a deserted island you would be able to exercise them. The traditional interpretation in the US is that they come from God: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

Considering all the slaves the authors of the declaration of independence owned, I don't know how to reconcile those thoughts.

Of the five main drafters of the Declaration, Thomas Jefferson was the only slaveowner. Jefferson was definitely a huge hypocrite on this question, but he at least had the decency to feel guilty about it. In fact, Jefferson's initial draft of the document included a paragraph condemning slavery and blaming the British crown for it—though unfortunately, this passage was excised from the final version.

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