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Comment by barry-cotter | Hacker News Reader

No, censorship can totally be the answer to getting people to stop saying things you don’t want them to say if you don’t have any commitment to free speech. See how Tucker Max or Milo Yiannopolous are no longer culturally relevant. Censorship works.

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You are comparing getting fired for costing your network billions by lying about elections and smearing, without substance, a company with getting silenced for your sexuality Nice.

I would argue it's more about eliminating bad faith actors from an otherwise healthy discussion. If you aren't arguing to make a point, just to get a reaction, you have no right to a platform.

I don't know about Milo, but after looking at Wikipedia, it looks like Tucker grew up and so did his former audience.

Jury’s still out for a while, but Carlson’s being kicked out of Fox recently has been a big hit so far.

Latest book sold 3k copies: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/aug/15/tucker-carlson...

Tucker Max, not Carlson. He was a pick up artist/bro influencer.

If I can find it again there's a really great video explaining how, to have free speech, you must restrict some speech. Because bad actors use speech and claims om they are "defending free speech!" in bad faith as a weapon to further their ends, and once they're in a position of power will shameless drop the pretenses and restrict any speech that doesn't entrench their position.

Here's a video on the subject:

Debate and Deplatforming

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFAYN6oWyIo

And it's sequel:

Why Deplatforming Works (And Why it Doesn't)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6r5C-G0VrjI

Known as the paradox of tolerance.

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

If you stop treating it as a moral commandment and instead consider it a treaty which allows civilization to exist, it becomes obvious that it doesn't apply to those who won't remain bound by it. It's not a paradox.

Tolerance is for all points of view that will allow the discussion to continue.

I trace tolerance in general back to the religious tolerance introduced by the Peace of Westphalia, and the centuries of religious war that preceded it. It obviously goes much further back, but that's the archetypical example for me.

Seen in this light, tolerance is somewhere between symbiosis and mutually assured destruction, and much less wishy-washy than everyone thinks it is.

> If I can find it again there's a really great video explaining how, to have free speech, you must restrict some speech.

It's nonsense. Constitutional governments with checks and balances can and do hold up to criticisms against them, even speech advocating against free speech. The paradox doesn't exist because the premise of the paradox, that tolerance of the intolerant inevitably results in the victory of the intolerant, isn't true.

>The paradox doesn't exist because the premise of the paradox, that tolerance of the intolerant inevitably results in the victory of the intolerant, isn't true.

The paradox doesn't apply to actors operating in good faith who simply disagree, but those whose intolerance extends to authoritarianism and violence in oppressing the free speech of their opponents, such as the Nazi regime that insipired it, and its truth seems self-evident. You'll have to explain to me how greater tolerance of the Nazis would have resulted in a better outcome for anyone (besides the Nazis) than intolerance of them in order to disprove the premise.

In America it is legal to advocate for Nazism. This is legal and simultaneously a non-threat because our system of checks and balances prevents them from overthrowing the government. They are not denied their first amendment rights, and yet they're abject losers. The US government is simultaneously tolerant of them and not threatened by them.

The supposed paradox of intolerance says that silencing people who would silence you is the only way to prevent yourself from being silenced, but this is demonstrably not true.

We can see this so clearly on reddit.

They have eliminated 100% of conservative voices from the platform, as a result it's become a haven for leftist extremists who now openly and repeatedly advocate for moving 'beyond electoralism,' the meaning of which is well understood.

I mean, I've read people arguing for 'Swiss democracy' and 'American ballots' (because you also vote on a restricted set of laws when electing state representatives) when they talk about going 'beyond electoralism', which to me id super fair. Can you explain what do you think it means?

our system of checks and balances prevents them from overthrowing the government

This is uninformed dogma, and reads as if you've lived under a rock the last few years. But to speak to your broader point about the paradox of tolerance, we don't owe a platform to speech that advocates for killing others, which is by definition also an attack on the free speech of those others.

Government policy ideals from a small handful of European men in the 18th century may be noble but I value more the documented modern observable effects of policies than their inspiration and goals.

The 20th century alone is not short on case studies. Again and again the empirical outcome of tolerating bad faith weaponized speech is the sharp reduction in the diversity of ideas and perspectives actually present in speech, by violently silencing or eliminating those who hold other perspectives.

> Again and again the empirical outcome of tolerating bad faith weaponized speech is the sharp reduction in the diversity of ideas and perspectives actually present in speech, by violently silencing or eliminating those who hold other perspectives.

So the problem isn't 'tolerating bad faith weaponized speech' but rather tolerating 'violently silencing or eliminating those who hold other perspectives.'

The second does not follow on from the first.

Also, what is (and who defines) 'weaponized speech'?

Likewise, who defines 'bad faith'?

> Government policy ideals from a small handful of European men in the 18th century may be noble but I value more the documented modern observable effects of policies than their inspiration and goals.

The proof is in the pudding, the American system of political tolerance has an excellent track record and leads to better outcomes in the long run.

Given recent events in the US, this is clearly not the reality.

With all that has gone on, I think it is another example of how it works so well. Strife happens, what is key is dealing with it. And the us seems to be doing fine.

A version that might be harder to misunderstand would be that if the other side resorts to violence first there's not much reason to continue using only rhetoric.

Which even still isn't a hard rule, there's a few well known examples of remaining tolerant (not trying to prevent your opponents from speaking) in the face of intolerance (your opponents do try to prevent you from speaking) and succeeding rather well.

The 'paradox' of meeting violence with violence is the most mundane "I'm 14 and this is deep" shit. I'm pretty sure this is not what people are actually talking about when they talk when they bring up Poppler's "paradox". The "paradox" is used to persuade people that authoritarianism is okay when they do it because everybody thinks of themselves as the good guys. The whole point of tolerance is that you don't meet words with violence, not that you should be a pacifist who refuses to meet even violence with violence.

> not what people are actually talking about when they talk when they bring up Poppler's "paradox"

Yes, that's the point. The popular way of using it to justify starting violence yourself is not an accurate reading.

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