Comment by ctdonath | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ctdonath | Hacker News Reader

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It's not like I'm defending yelling "fire!" in a movie theater.

I absolutely do defend the right to yell "fire!" in a movie theater. I also absolutely think you are subject to the consequences thereof.

If there IS a fire, then by all means yell "fire!" accordingly.

I've twice seen Penn Jillette stand on stage before thousands, juggling flaming torches, pontificating loudly about and proceeding to yell "fire!"

I've seen the movie _Backdraft_ in a movie theater; there was much yelling of "fire!" therein.

And, of course, if you scare a crowd into a life-threatening stampede by yelling "fire!" when there isn't one, then you're culpable for any harm that follows.

All of this is different from what you portrayed, which was incarcerating someone for yelling "fire!" in a theater purely on grounds of doing so, regardless of whether there was/wasn't a fire and whether (in case there was) it posed a threat.

> I absolutely do defend the right to yell "fire!" in a movie theater. I also absolutely think you are subject to the consequences thereof.

That's still not the kind of speech that needs to be protected and heard, as I'm sure you're aware. So I can't see a reason to spend this much time discussing yelling "fire" in a theater.

> All of this is different from what you portrayed, which was incarcerating someone for yelling "fire!" in a theater purely on grounds of doing so, regardless of whether there was/wasn't a fire and whether (in case there was) it posed a threat.

I portrayed nothing of the sort. Here's what I originally said:

>> In other words, say what you like, but don't be surprised when they haul you off to a concentration camp for being a naughty little thought-criminal, huh?

But nevermind, we've probably wasted enough of each other's time here.

> That's still not the kind of speech that needs to be protected and heard

This is the whole point of the discussion, right here. You're discriminating against a certain type of speech because you've judged it to be the wrong kind of speech. Once you've set a precedent that the wrong kind of speech can be infringed, you no longer have free speech - you have a struggle for the power to define allowed speech and disallowed speech.

It seems like you are unnecessarily conflating speech and the consequences of speech.

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