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Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

Well, we have a bunch of really problematic accounts on HN and I suspect that rather than to go into 'endless curious conversation' with those characters people just give up at some point. It's interesting in a way because one of PGs most famous post is the one about 'no broken windows'.

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I'm all for having conversations with those having other viewpoints, but it doesn't seem to be possible when they don't argue in good faith (or even grounded in reality).

I take zero pleasure in saying this, but "the other side" is fucking insane. There's no arguing from first principles, let alone acknowledging that there are issues of concern with one's propositions.

In the case of "free speech", there's a failure to acknowledge the fundamental proposition of it when used in the US -- in that it's about the government not being able to prosecute you for speech that it doesn't like. This is literally the basis of the OP.

I'm a fan of Christopher Hitchens and he embodied that "free speech absolutism" argument convincingly (as otherwise its a pathway to censorship and oppression), but I think it's also important to recognize Karl Popper's Intolerance of Intolerance.

This stuff is no longer idle speculation -- it is an active facet of authoritarianism that is playing out around us right now.

Indeed, and it is interesting how all those countries that have seen this up close have reasonable upper limits and courts that will try to find a balance without falling over one way or the other. Obviously you won't be able to please everybody all the time but we're - as you so eloquently put it - no longer in a speculative domain but in one where you can see the consequences play out in realtime.

It's like toddlers with guns, they may not know exactly how the guns work but they're bloody dangerous all the same.

Popper has it right, far more so than most other philosophers because he's coming at it almost from a security perspective: the system will have holes and you need to be willing to be pragmatic about that, rather than dogmatic.

My solution for HN is simple by the way, I give up, but one account at the time and I simply block them. That doesn't help the site but it does help my blood pressure. The one I use is called 'Comments owl for HN'.

> It's like toddlers with guns, they may not know exactly how the guns work but they're bloody dangerous all the same.

"At least 895 children aged 5 and under have managed to find a gun and unintentionally shoot themselves or someone else from 2015 to 2022"[0] (over 100 per year on average)

[0] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/children-fire-guns-toddlers-uni...

On coarser sites (Elon’s, now) I’d say “1st amendment sez muh tweets MUST be published!!!”, never quite figured out a less coarse way to say it, but you just showed me.

Every time I see news about Brendan Carr's latest threat leveraging FCC licenses to enforce approved administration speech I search for the corresponding HN post and half the time it's a graveyard.

Wasn't that long ago an article about Mark Zuckerberg claiming someone in the Biden admin made some vague request about state-sponsored disinformation brought every so-called 1A defender out of the woodwork, but apparently the actual regulator of news orgs publicly threatening their business is shrug worthy by comparison.

I've been on HN since 2010 (different account) and honestly used to take the libertarian/right-leaning types at their word about being free speech advocates and not simply partisans using it as a rhetorical weapon.

But, lesson learned...

I applaud your optimism.

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