[Politics] What is, in your opinion, a necessary set of minimal restrictions on freedom of thought, speech and expression?
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In this context I pretty much mean advocating for genocide or fascism. That and I don’t think you should be able to lie out your ass and call it news.
Who gets to decide what "hurt" means? The person hurting or the person being hurt? And how do you get both of them to agree what hurt means?
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But what if the news rephrases everything as the opinion of an expert? They wouldn't be lying, or at least not demonstratingly so. Yet they can claim pretty much anything.
They’d be lying if they present an „expert” who isn’t.
It just rubs me the wrong way that the only people with a claim against Fox News for the big lie was the voting machine company over lost profits. We can at least solve the standing issue.
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Who gets to decide what "hurt" means? The person hurting or the person being hurt? And how do you get both of them to agree what hurt means?
It would be defined as part of the law, hopefully with something reasonable and robust.
Take genocide advocacy - it pretty clearly leads to people getting hurt even if we don’t know exactly who.
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Proving works only if everyone agrees on the underlying definitions. If a group defines fire as being cold, there is no proving anything.
Science wouldn’t function by this metric. We aren’t in a universe where opinion shifts reality, we can make very solid axioms that are broadly true and testable.
It’s why science relies on the test of disproof. If a premise survives the test of disproof, it graduates to a hypothesis because it is seen as a reasonably accurate description of reality, in that nothing else comes as close.
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It seems to me a repeating pattern that once freedom of thought, speech and expression is limited for essentially any reason, it will have unintended consequences.
Once the tools are in place, they will be used, abused and inevitably end up in the hands of someone you disagree with, regardless of whether the original implementer had good intentions.
As such I'm personally very averse to restrictions. I've thought about the question a fair bit – there isn't a clear cut or obvious line to draw.
Please elaborate and motivate your answer. I'm genuinely curious about getting some fresh perspectives.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Your premise that any restriction on any thought, speech, or expression can cause unintended consequences is nonsensical.
You would have to prove this and while I may be inclined to agree with you what is the problem with unintended consequence? Why should we care considering everything we do causes unintended consequences.
All tools as well as laws can be abused. A poster here pointed out that anti-hate speech laws are being used against pro-palestine protestors. Does this make the law itself the problem or its application. Should we eliminate the law because a few corrupt politicians are abusing it.
There is nuance though. Like if every country was abusing anti-hate speech law and not enforcing it when its application would be beneficial for society. In this scenario you may have an argument for the law being the problem. Ultimately though if you have a bad actor it is hard to judge a tool or law unless it helps to create the bad actor.
Do anti-hate speech laws create the atmosphere for hate to proliferate? This is how you would judge it in my opinion. If the tool or law creates the problem it purports to solve then it is likely an issue.
I think your personal aversion is fine. I personally don't like to be controlled and I don't like to control people. Obviously what your personal opinions are and what it takes to run a team, a corporation, or a country are not in the same realm. You simply can't run a country like you would run your life.