Ok so openly disagreeing with them means what Will? What do you think the progressive movement does that is silencing? I'm not aware of any bills in any houses of congress in the US that forbids people from being anti vaxx, anti tax, or anti homosexual (outside of the rare states that say you can't as a business discriminate), so what do you think Liberals are doing that silences their opposition other than stating they are wrong and idiotic?
A lot of the concern I have on the left (which we've talked about in past threads) is the increasingly common cases of the left doing boycotts designed to get people they disagree with fired. The article I linked in the OP has lots of examples, and I find it to be a disturbing trend. On a smaller scale, shunning/isolating people because they have a 'bad' opinion can also be kind of a shitty thing to do, but that's more situational and doesn't happen all that much on the national level.
Obviously that doesn't violate the first amendment in itself, but it seems to lead to the same outcome. It's essentially just crowdsourcing the thing we hate oppressive governments for doing.
Boycotts are a feature of the market we have, and are different than government censorship. This is a terrible comparison.
Squidget not all ideas are created equal, if someone is an anti vaxxer they are literally trying to kill others through their idiocy. I have no need to treat them with respect or seek their approval. Just because those idiots use similar methods doesn't suddenly make what I'm doing equivalent, that's the issue with the whole "both sides are bad." It assumes both sides arguments are equal and there are very few things in life where that is ever true, and about 0 of them are in politics.
No it doesn't - that's a strawman. Littering is bad. Knifing someone for littering is also bad. Knifing someone for littering is more badder than badding for littering.
Just because two things are bad doesn't mean they are equally bad, even when they are reactionary to each other. You are correct that you don't have to seek anti-vaxxers' approval. Why would you, when you oppose their fundamental position? You also don't have to shoot them in the head to stop their advocacy, and somewhere between "seeking their approval" and "shooting them in the head" there is a line where you go from "civil" to "goose".
So Jenny McCarthy's beliefs are bad, and we should disagree with them and work to make them less acceptable by talking about them because they are bad, and openly disagreeing with them.
But also we have to tolerate people who think gay people are bad and wrong, instead of talking about their bad ideas openly and keeping them from metastizing.
I'm really confused, and think we are all talking past each other when we say things like "tolerate", "silence", "harm", "bad ideas", and the like
McCarthy's beliefs are demonstrably leading to people dying. She may as well be leading a charge to encourage small children to play in traffic. There is a clear and objective justification for telling everyone who'll listen that she's a fucking nutter and that we should point and laugh at her.
Admittedly, this standard gets sticky. What if, for example, someone is saying we should lower taxes? Should we publicly shame them and tell them that they're bad people? Well, no, probably not. But what if you believe their endorsement of lower taxes directly translates into fewer dollars going to government programs that save lives? Less money to starving people, less money for fire-fighters, and so on?
Yeah, it gets messy. Overall, I'd endorse a per-case analysis that figures in how clear it is that a view is wrong and/or harmful, and what sort of direct line can be drawn between the belief and the harm. I think it's an I Know It When I See It thing. There's a gradient in there somewhere, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be vocally drown out someone who's, say, endorsing public lynchings of minorities.
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Ok so openly disagreeing with them means what Will? What do you think the progressive movement does that is silencing? I'm not aware of any bills in any houses of congress in the US that forbids people from being anti vaxx, anti tax, or anti homosexual (outside of the rare states that say you can't as a business discriminate), so what do you think Liberals are doing that silences their opposition other than stating they are wrong and idiotic?
A lot of the concern I have on the left (which we've talked about in past threads) is the increasingly common cases of the left doing boycotts designed to get people they disagree with fired. The article I linked in the OP has lots of examples, and I find it to be a disturbing trend. On a smaller scale, shunning/isolating people because they have a 'bad' opinion can also be kind of a shitty thing to do, but that's more situational and doesn't happen all that much on the national level.
Obviously that doesn't violate the first amendment in itself, but it seems to lead to the same outcome. It's essentially just crowdsourcing the thing we hate oppressive governments for doing.
So in your mind the people of your community speaking out against your view points is a bad thing and they should just accept your viewpoints whether they like them or not?
This is not a new habit, its not a new thing to do, a famous example is Rosa Parks but there have been others over the years. That you attack the left for it when its overwhelming as of late been a tool of the right, and then equate the same under a "both sides are bad" tells me you have a flawed argument.
The community speaking is not inherently bad or good, it is entirely situational based on why they are speaking and what they are advocating against. I can like the boycott of one business without supporting the boycott of another, its called forming individual opinions about the goals of a boycott not the method.
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
So Jenny McCarthy's beliefs are bad, and we should disagree with them and work to make them less acceptable by talking about them because they are bad, and openly disagreeing with them.
But also we have to tolerate people who think gay people are bad and wrong, instead of talking about their bad ideas openly and keeping them from metastizing.
I'm really confused, and think we are all talking past each other when we say things like "tolerate", "silence", "harm", "bad ideas", and the like
McCarthy's beliefs are demonstrably leading to people dying. She may as well be leading a charge to encourage small children to play in traffic. There is a clear and objective justification for telling everyone who'll listen that she's a fucking nutter and that we should point and laugh at her.
Admittedly, this standard gets sticky. What if, for example, someone is saying we should lower taxes? Should we publicly shame them and tell them that they're bad people? Well, no, probably not. But what if you believe their endorsement of lower taxes directly translates into fewer dollars going to government programs that save lives? Less money to starving people, less money for fire-fighters, and so on?
Yeah, it gets messy. Overall, I'd endorse a per-case analysis that figures in how clear it is that a view is wrong and/or harmful, and what sort of direct line can be drawn between the belief and the harm. I think it's an I Know It When I See It thing. There's a gradient in there somewhere, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be vocally drown out someone who's, say, endorsing public lynchings of minorities.
I mean, I get the general argument of "treat people how you want to be treated."
But again, if we are discussing personal philosophy
If I'm saying something that hurts someone I want people to be intolerant of me!
don't you think you have said things that hurt people, broadly speaking?
Yes, absolutely. I've been told to shut my mouth about them. Life goes on, you learn what is and isn't acceptable.
I guess if you get REALLY broad, everything I believe as an extreme liberal probably "hurts" someone, but now I think you are lowering the bar farther than I did.
I guess my only other point (since I've made them quite clearly, I think, on the last page) is this:
A view that someone else's intolerance is doing harm, and that they should stop, is itself a logically inconsistent stance.
Rather, if you accept that there is a line wherein someone's belief causes harm, and at that point it is acceptable to become intolerant of that belief, it is not then logically consistent to disagree and accuse people whose lines are drawn differently.
Doing so tacitly assumes that their beliefs of when something causes harm, cause harm.
In a practical example, telling people that they should tolerate the viewpoint that "gay people are wrong" because it doesn't cause much harm, is itself not tolerating all those who think it does cause harm.
The point here is that each case must be judged individually, and that sometimes people will disagree on the level of harm acceptable to cause action, and true tolerance also accepts the beliefs that even the smallest harm should be acted on.
Squidget not all ideas are created equal, if someone is an anti vaxxer they are literally trying to kill others through their idiocy. I have no need to treat them with respect or seek their approval. Just because those idiots use similar methods doesn't suddenly make what I'm doing equivalent, that's the issue with the whole "both sides are bad." It assumes both sides arguments are equal and there are very few things in life where that is ever true, and about 0 of them are in politics.
No it doesn't - that's a strawman. Littering is bad. Knifing someone for littering is also bad. Knifing someone for littering is more badder than badding for littering.
Just because two things are bad doesn't mean they are equally bad, even when they are reactionary to each other. You are correct that you don't have to seek anti-vaxxers' approval. Why would you, when you oppose their fundamental position? You also don't have to shoot them in the head to stop their advocacy, and somewhere between "seeking their approval" and "shooting them in the head" there is a line where you go from "civil" to "goose".
What is this I don't even? Can you bullet point this so you can make a point that isn't insane?
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
"Liberals have a culture of shutting people up for small slights" is an intolerant statement, by the definitions provided by those attempting to get to some "true tolerant" society.
Ok so openly disagreeing with them means what Will? What do you think the progressive movement does that is silencing? I'm not aware of any bills in any houses of congress in the US that forbids people from being anti vaxx, anti tax, or anti homosexual (outside of the rare states that say you can't as a business discriminate), so what do you think Liberals are doing that silences their opposition other than stating they are wrong and idiotic?
A lot of the concern I have on the left (which we've talked about in past threads) is the increasingly common cases of the left doing boycotts designed to get people they disagree with fired. The article I linked in the OP has lots of examples, and I find it to be a disturbing trend. On a smaller scale, shunning/isolating people because they have a 'bad' opinion can also be kind of a shitty thing to do, but that's more situational and doesn't happen all that much on the national level.
Obviously that doesn't violate the first amendment in itself, but it seems to lead to the same outcome. It's essentially just crowdsourcing the thing we hate oppressive governments for doing.
Boycotts are a feature of the market we have, and are different than government censorship. This is a terrible comparison.
Do you care to go into more detail here than "That's terrible?"
Because the results seem the same to me. The basic idea of the first amendment is that society suffers when controversial opinions are silenced. If we have a practice of private citizens banding together and doing the punishing instead of the government, how is that any different? Doesn't it create the same result? Why don't we have the same concerns about freedom of expression that caused the founding fathers to write that into the constitution in the first place?
And really, why doesn't the same argument apply to government censorshop? If you're going to boycott any company with a bad opinion, then why not lobby to have the government fine people for having bad opinions? It's the same result, except it's going to be handled more fairly and maybe there would even be some kind of due process. So that's an even better outcome, right?
Squidget not all ideas are created equal, if someone is an anti vaxxer they are literally trying to kill others through their idiocy. I have no need to treat them with respect or seek their approval. Just because those idiots use similar methods doesn't suddenly make what I'm doing equivalent, that's the issue with the whole "both sides are bad." It assumes both sides arguments are equal and there are very few things in life where that is ever true, and about 0 of them are in politics.
No it doesn't - that's a strawman. Littering is bad. Knifing someone for littering is also bad. Knifing someone for littering is more badder than badding for littering.
Just because two things are bad doesn't mean they are equally bad, even when they are reactionary to each other. You are correct that you don't have to seek anti-vaxxers' approval. Why would you, when you oppose their fundamental position? You also don't have to shoot them in the head to stop their advocacy, and somewhere between "seeking their approval" and "shooting them in the head" there is a line where you go from "civil" to "goose".
What is this I don't even? Can you bullet point this so you can make a point that isn't insane?
Ok so openly disagreeing with them means what Will? What do you think the progressive movement does that is silencing? I'm not aware of any bills in any houses of congress in the US that forbids people from being anti vaxx, anti tax, or anti homosexual (outside of the rare states that say you can't as a business discriminate), so what do you think Liberals are doing that silences their opposition other than stating they are wrong and idiotic?
A lot of the concern I have on the left (which we've talked about in past threads) is the increasingly common cases of the left doing boycotts designed to get people they disagree with fired. The article I linked in the OP has lots of examples, and I find it to be a disturbing trend. On a smaller scale, shunning/isolating people because they have a 'bad' opinion can also be kind of a shitty thing to do, but that's more situational and doesn't happen all that much on the national level.
Obviously that doesn't violate the first amendment in itself, but it seems to lead to the same outcome. It's essentially just crowdsourcing the thing we hate oppressive governments for doing.
Boycotts are a feature of the market we have, and are different than government censorship. This is a terrible comparison.
Am I morally required to shop at Whole Foods or Chick-Fil-A? Does choosing to go to Andronico's or Church's Chicken instead make me "intolerant?"
I don't even understand how that works out, logically. I'm supposed to be agnostic towards how a business spends their money, but other people can judge me about how I spend my money?
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
"Liberals have a culture of shutting people up for small slights" is an intolerant statement, by the definitions provided by those attempting to get to some "true tolerant" society.
I don't think the statement is what people are objecting to here. It's the part where they band together and punish people for their beliefs that becomes more problematic.
Small slights like not believing gay people should have equal rights, rich people should pay more in taxes and ranchers should pay their taxes without threatening to shoot federal employees.
You know the small shit.
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
Ok so openly disagreeing with them means what Will? What do you think the progressive movement does that is silencing? I'm not aware of any bills in any houses of congress in the US that forbids people from being anti vaxx, anti tax, or anti homosexual (outside of the rare states that say you can't as a business discriminate), so what do you think Liberals are doing that silences their opposition other than stating they are wrong and idiotic?
A lot of the concern I have on the left (which we've talked about in past threads) is the increasingly common cases of the left doing boycotts designed to get people they disagree with fired. The article I linked in the OP has lots of examples, and I find it to be a disturbing trend. On a smaller scale, shunning/isolating people because they have a 'bad' opinion can also be kind of a shitty thing to do, but that's more situational and doesn't happen all that much on the national level.
Obviously that doesn't violate the first amendment in itself, but it seems to lead to the same outcome. It's essentially just crowdsourcing the thing we hate oppressive governments for doing.
Boycotts are a feature of the market we have, and are different than government censorship. This is a terrible comparison.
Do you care to go into more detail here than "That's terrible?"
Because the results seem the same to me. The basic idea of the first amendment is that society suffers when controversial opinions are silenced. If we have a practice of private citizens banding together and doing the punishing instead of the government, how is that any different? Doesn't it create the same result? Why don't we have the same concerns about freedom of expression that caused the founding fathers to write that into the constitution in the first place?
And really, why doesn't the same argument apply to government censorshop? If you're going to boycott any company with a bad opinion, then why not lobby to have the government fine people for having bad opinions? It's the same result, except it's going to be handled more fairly and maybe there would even be some kind of due process. So that's an even better outcome, right?
This is a different discussion, honestly. The whole point of democracy is that we have private citizens who can come together to express their ideas.
I don't really know how to engage with this if we start from the premise "public boycotts are the same as government censorship". This is basically a false statement, and I don't quite know where to go from here.
If you're going to boycott any company with a bad opinion, then why not lobby to have the government fine people for having bad opinions? It's the same result
What the fuck?
Refusing to patronize a business is the same as the government fining a business?
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
"Liberals have a culture of shutting people up for small slights" is an intolerant statement, by the definitions provided by those attempting to get to some "true tolerant" society.
I don't think the statement is what people are objecting to here. It's the part where they band together and punish people for their beliefs that becomes more problematic.
"Liberals have a culture of shutting people up for small slights" is an intolerant statement, by the definitions provided by those attempting to get to some "true tolerant" society.
I don't think the statement is what people are objecting to here. It's the part where they band together and punish people for their beliefs that becomes more problematic.
We are a social culture, banding together to within the law "punish" those who we think have stepped outside of our societal rules is how we exist as a society. If you think someone has been punished incorrectly, than you start up a counter protest, nothing prevents you from speaking your mind the same way someone else spoke theirs.
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
Torches and Pitchforks? Great so you're saying bad ideas are monsters cobbled together from things we as a society have cast off and only power mad scientists have resurrected them in an attempt to play god? Wait I think, yeah think I lost this one someplace.
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
I mean, I get the general argument of "treat people how you want to be treated."
But again, if we are discussing personal philosophy
If I'm saying something that hurts someone I want people to be intolerant of me!
don't you think you have said things that hurt people, broadly speaking?
Yes, absolutely. I've been told to shut my mouth about them. Life goes on, you learn what is and isn't acceptable.
I guess if you get REALLY broad, everything I believe as an extreme liberal probably "hurts" someone, but now I think you are lowering the bar farther than I did.
i guess in terms of harm i don't really see much difference between a woman being told some anti-woman thing and a christian being told some anti-christian thing.
which isn't to say that i'd be inclined to disagree or agree with one statement or the other.
Nobody ever gets punished for their beliefs. Nobody knows about their beliefs.
People do get punished for speech, and rightly so, because speech is an act that can damage other people. Jenny McArthy's speech is killing children. That's quite important.
So Jenny McCarthy's beliefs are bad, and we should disagree with them and work to make them less acceptable by talking about them because they are bad, and openly disagreeing with them.
But also we have to tolerate people who think gay people are bad and wrong, instead of talking about their bad ideas openly and keeping them from metastizing.
I'm really confused, and think we are all talking past each other when we say things like "tolerate", "silence", "harm", "bad ideas", and the like
McCarthy's beliefs are demonstrably leading to people dying. She may as well be leading a charge to encourage small children to play in traffic. There is a clear and objective justification for telling everyone who'll listen that she's a fucking nutter and that we should point and laugh at her.
Admittedly, this standard gets sticky. What if, for example, someone is saying we should lower taxes? Should we publicly shame them and tell them that they're bad people? Well, no, probably not. But what if you believe their endorsement of lower taxes directly translates into fewer dollars going to government programs that save lives? Less money to starving people, less money for fire-fighters, and so on?
Yeah, it gets messy. Overall, I'd endorse a per-case analysis that figures in how clear it is that a view is wrong and/or harmful, and what sort of direct line can be drawn between the belief and the harm. I think it's an I Know It When I See It thing. There's a gradient in there somewhere, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be vocally drown out someone who's, say, endorsing public lynchings of minorities.
Pretty much my take, when it comes to figuring out appropriate responses to people that I disagree with. Case by case, determining harm and how easy it is to see the harm. In some cases it's purely philosophical and the it's hard to prove harm, so no point in publicly shaming someone because that's just being an intolerant douche. In other cases, maybe there is minor harm, but one has to do quite a bit of digging to spot the harm and sometimes it's one of those either or scenarios, where there is both a negative and positive effect for a decision and the individuals choice is best on what they think is best. In this case it's a bit dicey, it's either not clear to them that they are doing harm or they know harm is being done, but feel that the outcome is better than the alternative, where a different form of harm is done. Probably won't publicly shame them if the decision isn't based completely out of greedy self-interest (ex. middle class dude wants lower taxes, so that he has more money to spend and because he feels the local government isn't making efficient use tax money. I might disagree, but I can see where he is coming from. Wealthy dude wants lower taxes, just because it's his money, not only will I disagree, but I'll be critical of his stance; especially, if his business is getting government subsidies). Sometimes the view is just wrong, like completely fucking wrong and harmful to society, like anti-vaxxers and it needs to be ridiculed.
So Jenny McCarthy's beliefs are bad, and we should disagree with them and work to make them less acceptable by talking about them because they are bad, and openly disagreeing with them.
But also we have to tolerate people who think gay people are bad and wrong, instead of talking about their bad ideas openly and keeping them from metastizing.
I'm really confused, and think we are all talking past each other when we say things like "tolerate", "silence", "harm", "bad ideas", and the like
When you disagree with me, you're silencing me and shouting me down.
When I disagree with you, I'm just engaging in reasoned discourse.
Hope that helps.
you know, i'd appreciate a little more earnestness and a little less sarcasm. i know you have some ideas worth discussing.
the lynch mob is a feature, not a bug in the democratic system
You would hope that it swings your way. Sometimes it doesn't.
The opposite is a government that disallows citizens to band together in the first place (which is censorship)
I don't think those are the only two options. For example, you could have a set of social rules that discourages people from forming into lynch mobs - not necessarily enforced by the government, but strongly encouraged as the right thing to do.
You laugh, but up until pretty recently this is how a lot of government functioned. Look at the reactions when republicans used the filibuster or the debt ceiling as political tools in recent years. The issue isn't that they're doing something illegal, it's that they're doing something which ultimately causes the system to break down if everybody does it.
A lot of society exists in these margins. The law is only useful as a blunt instrument for certain things. I'm not advocating for new legislation here, I'm trying to create a discussion on the best ways to approach these issues, in the hopes that maybe people won't join future lynch mobs so easily.
The difference of course being Will the person being one of those is likely to come from a congress person in our actual government, and the other is likely to be said on a message board by someone who watch's MLP.
Or to put it another way. We have a supreme court case to deny women having their birth control covered by healthcare because of christianity, we do not have a supreme court case attempting to deny someone to practice their christianity because someone is offended.
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
I think there's also consideration of what the best method is for defeating an opinion or belief you disagree with.
Is pointing and laughing at people who say "I'm not sure I'm really comfortable with gay marriage" going to help your cause? Likely not. It may well just make a bunch of people think you're an asshole and that, by extension, gay marriage is something endorsed by assholes. Similarly, "Lower taxes are fucking stupid, lern 2 econ dood" isn't really a convincing argument
On the other hand, engaging someone like antivaxxers or creationists in a technical argument is mostly just going to get you drowned into pseudoscientific idiocy that's impossible to effectively argue against anyway. Bets bet to combat those is to establish that the whole concept is so provably asinine that discussing it is silly. It helps when the number of authorities who agree with you is in the high 90-percents.
Different tactics for different issues.
ElJeffe on
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
I guess, Will, my real question to you is a reformation of yours to me.
"What do you mean unsafe?"
To extend the branch, I will answer your question: "Safety is a state without external stressors such as impending threat of bodily harm, mental anguish, or personal defamation"
i think you probably have a specific scenario in mind here and are intentionally drawing the bar pretty low.
i guess i'd ask you to consider whether you'd find the same low-bar of tolerance acceptable in your political or social foes. should a christian refuse to hear opinions that portray his or her religion in a negative light? should a conservative refuse to listen to critics of a free market? should a social conservative refuse to tolerate hearing the views of the abortionist or the feminist?
all of these things would clearly constitute mental anguish and maybe personal defamation.
i suspect you wouldn't regard these as socially healthy world-views.
like, assume that someone thought that you and yours had bad opinions and bad lifestyles. what sort of consideration would you prefer they show you?
the fact that you are deeply convinced of the rightness of your cause does not distinguish you in this respect.
I think you are setting the bar also very low, but it is a different bar. You are positing things where you know I disagree, to attempt to inspire me to say something like "Well I'm right, and they are wrong!" at which point, ah-ha! The trap is set! You are intolerant!
But then I think you are setting the bar for "harmless belief" very low, and drawing a lot of equivocation between things we can pretty much empirically determine to be dangerous, or at least at cross-purposes with their stated goal.
No, I don't believe "christian hearing negative portrayal of christianity" is the same as "gay people being told being gay is wrong" or "black people being portrayed as criminals"
Treating all beliefs equal is not a necessity for society, and not all opinions carry equal weight.
Also, lots of weasel words here. What is a "negative portrayal of chrisitanity?" Personally I avoid atheist groups for this very reason! They are wayyy to rude to the religious! But if a christian was complaining that someone was discussing the negative portrayal of women in the bible, or pointing out the historical inaccuracies? Then I'm going to react differently.
Religious tolerance is a byproduct of the West's centuries of experience with massive religious wars, official legal religious persecution and forced conversation. It's a very solid practice not to immediately judge someone based on their religion. People are surprisingly diverse individuals.
But... A religion is an organization with set dogma of beliefs. Some of those beliefs can be actively hateful and harmful to society. There's even a mechanism for members of a religion who disagree with immoral beliefs held by others of their faith - a schism. Our ideas of human rights go back to the day when Martin Luther penned his dissent to the door. It is perfectly okay to say a religion, its leaders and its beliefs are shit.
I mean, I get the general argument of "treat people how you want to be treated."
But again, if we are discussing personal philosophy
If I'm saying something that hurts someone I want people to be intolerant of me!
don't you think you have said things that hurt people, broadly speaking?
Yes, absolutely. I've been told to shut my mouth about them. Life goes on, you learn what is and isn't acceptable.
I guess if you get REALLY broad, everything I believe as an extreme liberal probably "hurts" someone, but now I think you are lowering the bar farther than I did.
i guess in terms of harm i don't really see much difference between a woman being told some anti-woman thing and a christian being told some anti-christian thing.
which isn't to say that i'd be inclined to disagree or agree with one statement or the other.
Again, you and I just have the bar for harm set differently, which is really what this disagreement is about.
Not "whether you can be intolerant and silence someone's beliefs", because you agree that this is something that is sometimes necessary!
You just have a higher threshold than others. Although, interestingly, you have different bars, because it doesn't take much for you to become intolerant of, say, social justice people.
I would argue that the harm to you from social justice warriors is pretty low, to the point that you shouldn't really worry about this phenomenon.
This isn't really like...a criticism. It is just my point here that we all have different bars, and tolerance is about accepting that people have different bars just as much as it is accepting that people have different beliefs.
"The answer to speech you disagree with is not silencing of that speech, but more speech, of a kind you agree with"
Screaming matches accomplish nothing.
I want to print this out and mail it to people the next time a feminist complains about a game and someone says "the solution to art you don't like isn't less art, it is more art"
the lynch mob is a feature, not a bug in the democratic system
You would hope that it swings your way. Sometimes it doesn't.
The opposite is a government that disallows citizens to band together in the first place (which is censorship)
I don't think those are the only two options. For example, you could have a set of social rules that discourages people from forming into lynch mobs - not necessarily enforced by the government, but strongly encouraged as the right thing to do.
You laugh, but up until pretty recently this is how a lot of government functioned. Look at the reactions when republicans used the filibuster or the debt ceiling as political tools in recent years. The issue isn't that they're doing something illegal, it's that they're doing something which ultimately causes the system to break down if everybody does it.
A lot of society exists in these margins. The law is only useful as a blunt instrument for certain things. I'm not advocating for new legislation here, I'm trying to create a discussion on the best ways to approach these issues, in the hopes that maybe people won't join future lynch mobs so easily.
You do realize up until the recent debt ceiling fight this worked exceptionally well for the republican party. They have shut down the government and prevented anything good from being done and got the sequester passed. So what are you saying?
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
So Jenny McCarthy's beliefs are bad, and we should disagree with them and work to make them less acceptable by talking about them because they are bad, and openly disagreeing with them.
But also we have to tolerate people who think gay people are bad and wrong, instead of talking about their bad ideas openly and keeping them from metastizing.
I'm really confused, and think we are all talking past each other when we say things like "tolerate", "silence", "harm", "bad ideas", and the like
McCarthy's beliefs are demonstrably leading to people dying. She may as well be leading a charge to encourage small children to play in traffic. There is a clear and objective justification for telling everyone who'll listen that she's a fucking nutter and that we should point and laugh at her.
Admittedly, this standard gets sticky. What if, for example, someone is saying we should lower taxes? Should we publicly shame them and tell them that they're bad people? Well, no, probably not. But what if you believe their endorsement of lower taxes directly translates into fewer dollars going to government programs that save lives? Less money to starving people, less money for fire-fighters, and so on?
Yeah, it gets messy. Overall, I'd endorse a per-case analysis that figures in how clear it is that a view is wrong and/or harmful, and what sort of direct line can be drawn between the belief and the harm. I think it's an I Know It When I See It thing. There's a gradient in there somewhere, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be vocally drown out someone who's, say, endorsing public lynchings of minorities.
Pretty much my take, when it comes to figuring out appropriate responses to people that I disagree with. Case by case, determining harm and how easy it is to see the harm. In some cases it's purely philosophical and the it's hard to prove harm, so no point in publicly shaming someone because that's just being an intolerant douche. In other cases, maybe there is minor harm, but one has to do quite a bit of digging to spot the harm and sometimes it's one of those either or scenarios, where there is both a negative and positive effect for a decision and the individuals choice is best on what they think is best. In this case it's a bit dicey, it's either not clear to them that they are doing harm or they know harm is being done, but feel that the outcome is better than the alternative, where a different form of harm is done. Probably won't publicly shame them if the decision isn't based completely out of greedy self-interest (ex. middle class dude wants lower taxes, so that he has more money to spend and because he feels the local government isn't making efficient use tax money. I might disagree, but I can see where he is coming from. Wealthy dude wants lower taxes, just because it's his money, not only will I disagree, but I'll be critical of his stance; especially, if his business is getting government subsidies). Sometimes the view is just wrong, like completely fucking wrong and harmful to society, like anti-vaxxers and it needs to be ridiculed.
This seems to assume that shouting down and mocking anti-vaxxers is the best way to stop the anti-vaccination movement. Like if you shout at them and ridicule them enough eventually the bad opinion will go away.
And historically, it just doesn't seem to work all that well. If anything, the anti-vax movement seem to have become more vocal in recent years. So have MRAs. If you're liberal, Fox News likely ridicules you all the time - has that caused you to become more conservative? So where's the evidence that this method actually works?
I'm unconvinced that the primary goal of ridiculing these movements isn't catharsis for the one doing the ridicule. It doesn't seem to change their opinions or reduce the size of the movement much. If anything, seeing a big group yelling at and ridiculing a small group seems to push things in the other direction - people who don't understand the issue can naturally end up wanting to side with the underdog.
Posts
Boycotts are a feature of the market we have, and are different than government censorship. This is a terrible comparison.
Just because two things are bad doesn't mean they are equally bad, even when they are reactionary to each other. You are correct that you don't have to seek anti-vaxxers' approval. Why would you, when you oppose their fundamental position? You also don't have to shoot them in the head to stop their advocacy, and somewhere between "seeking their approval" and "shooting them in the head" there is a line where you go from "civil" to "goose".
McCarthy's beliefs are demonstrably leading to people dying. She may as well be leading a charge to encourage small children to play in traffic. There is a clear and objective justification for telling everyone who'll listen that she's a fucking nutter and that we should point and laugh at her.
Admittedly, this standard gets sticky. What if, for example, someone is saying we should lower taxes? Should we publicly shame them and tell them that they're bad people? Well, no, probably not. But what if you believe their endorsement of lower taxes directly translates into fewer dollars going to government programs that save lives? Less money to starving people, less money for fire-fighters, and so on?
Yeah, it gets messy. Overall, I'd endorse a per-case analysis that figures in how clear it is that a view is wrong and/or harmful, and what sort of direct line can be drawn between the belief and the harm. I think it's an I Know It When I See It thing. There's a gradient in there somewhere, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be vocally drown out someone who's, say, endorsing public lynchings of minorities.
don't you think you have said things that hurt people, broadly speaking?
So in your mind the people of your community speaking out against your view points is a bad thing and they should just accept your viewpoints whether they like them or not?
This is not a new habit, its not a new thing to do, a famous example is Rosa Parks but there have been others over the years. That you attack the left for it when its overwhelming as of late been a tool of the right, and then equate the same under a "both sides are bad" tells me you have a flawed argument.
The community speaking is not inherently bad or good, it is entirely situational based on why they are speaking and what they are advocating against. I can like the boycott of one business without supporting the boycott of another, its called forming individual opinions about the goals of a boycott not the method.
pleasepaypreacher.net
Yes, this is precisely my point.
Yes, absolutely. I've been told to shut my mouth about them. Life goes on, you learn what is and isn't acceptable.
I guess if you get REALLY broad, everything I believe as an extreme liberal probably "hurts" someone, but now I think you are lowering the bar farther than I did.
Lots of examples...
...in the passive voice, mostly without citation.
"The Whole Foods CEO was told to shut up about Obamacare."
Really? By whom? Some dude on Twitter?
What if that dude was me? What if I have a blog called "TheWholeFoodsCEOShouldShutUpAboutObamacare.tumblr.com?"
Should I just... *sunglasses* ...shut up?
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
A view that someone else's intolerance is doing harm, and that they should stop, is itself a logically inconsistent stance.
Rather, if you accept that there is a line wherein someone's belief causes harm, and at that point it is acceptable to become intolerant of that belief, it is not then logically consistent to disagree and accuse people whose lines are drawn differently.
Doing so tacitly assumes that their beliefs of when something causes harm, cause harm.
In a practical example, telling people that they should tolerate the viewpoint that "gay people are wrong" because it doesn't cause much harm, is itself not tolerating all those who think it does cause harm.
The point here is that each case must be judged individually, and that sometimes people will disagree on the level of harm acceptable to cause action, and true tolerance also accepts the beliefs that even the smallest harm should be acted on.
What is this I don't even? Can you bullet point this so you can make a point that isn't insane?
pleasepaypreacher.net
Do you care to go into more detail here than "That's terrible?"
Because the results seem the same to me. The basic idea of the first amendment is that society suffers when controversial opinions are silenced. If we have a practice of private citizens banding together and doing the punishing instead of the government, how is that any different? Doesn't it create the same result? Why don't we have the same concerns about freedom of expression that caused the founding fathers to write that into the constitution in the first place?
And really, why doesn't the same argument apply to government censorshop? If you're going to boycott any company with a bad opinion, then why not lobby to have the government fine people for having bad opinions? It's the same result, except it's going to be handled more fairly and maybe there would even be some kind of due process. So that's an even better outcome, right?
Am I morally required to shop at Whole Foods or Chick-Fil-A? Does choosing to go to Andronico's or Church's Chicken instead make me "intolerant?"
I don't even understand how that works out, logically. I'm supposed to be agnostic towards how a business spends their money, but other people can judge me about how I spend my money?
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
I don't think the statement is what people are objecting to here. It's the part where they band together and punish people for their beliefs that becomes more problematic.
You know the small shit.
pleasepaypreacher.net
This is a different discussion, honestly. The whole point of democracy is that we have private citizens who can come together to express their ideas.
I don't really know how to engage with this if we start from the premise "public boycotts are the same as government censorship". This is basically a false statement, and I don't quite know where to go from here.
What the fuck?
Refusing to patronize a business is the same as the government fining a business?
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
What do you mean "problematic"
Should we...not tolerate this?
We are a social culture, banding together to within the law "punish" those who we think have stepped outside of our societal rules is how we exist as a society. If you think someone has been punished incorrectly, than you start up a counter protest, nothing prevents you from speaking your mind the same way someone else spoke theirs.
pleasepaypreacher.net
You would hope that it swings your way. Sometimes it doesn't.
The opposite is a government that disallows citizens to band together in the first place (which is censorship)
Can I finally post this
Oh my god I can
"The answer to speech you disagree with is not silencing of that speech, but more speech, of a kind you agree with"
the metaphorical lynch mob, I assume?
I don't think you mean literal lynch mobs
but I do think that needs to be clarified before somebody is all "Arch is in a hangin' mood!"
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
I am from the south
But yes, the metaphorical lynch mob
On reflection, should have used "torches and pitchforks"
Too late, its already been sigged.
pleasepaypreacher.net
i guess in terms of harm i don't really see much difference between a woman being told some anti-woman thing and a christian being told some anti-christian thing.
which isn't to say that i'd be inclined to disagree or agree with one statement or the other.
People do get punished for speech, and rightly so, because speech is an act that can damage other people. Jenny McArthy's speech is killing children. That's quite important.
Pretty much my take, when it comes to figuring out appropriate responses to people that I disagree with. Case by case, determining harm and how easy it is to see the harm. In some cases it's purely philosophical and the it's hard to prove harm, so no point in publicly shaming someone because that's just being an intolerant douche. In other cases, maybe there is minor harm, but one has to do quite a bit of digging to spot the harm and sometimes it's one of those either or scenarios, where there is both a negative and positive effect for a decision and the individuals choice is best on what they think is best. In this case it's a bit dicey, it's either not clear to them that they are doing harm or they know harm is being done, but feel that the outcome is better than the alternative, where a different form of harm is done. Probably won't publicly shame them if the decision isn't based completely out of greedy self-interest (ex. middle class dude wants lower taxes, so that he has more money to spend and because he feels the local government isn't making efficient use tax money. I might disagree, but I can see where he is coming from. Wealthy dude wants lower taxes, just because it's his money, not only will I disagree, but I'll be critical of his stance; especially, if his business is getting government subsidies). Sometimes the view is just wrong, like completely fucking wrong and harmful to society, like anti-vaxxers and it needs to be ridiculed.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
you know, i'd appreciate a little more earnestness and a little less sarcasm. i know you have some ideas worth discussing.
I don't think those are the only two options. For example, you could have a set of social rules that discourages people from forming into lynch mobs - not necessarily enforced by the government, but strongly encouraged as the right thing to do.
You laugh, but up until pretty recently this is how a lot of government functioned. Look at the reactions when republicans used the filibuster or the debt ceiling as political tools in recent years. The issue isn't that they're doing something illegal, it's that they're doing something which ultimately causes the system to break down if everybody does it.
A lot of society exists in these margins. The law is only useful as a blunt instrument for certain things. I'm not advocating for new legislation here, I'm trying to create a discussion on the best ways to approach these issues, in the hopes that maybe people won't join future lynch mobs so easily.
Or to put it another way. We have a supreme court case to deny women having their birth control covered by healthcare because of christianity, we do not have a supreme court case attempting to deny someone to practice their christianity because someone is offended.
pleasepaypreacher.net
Is pointing and laughing at people who say "I'm not sure I'm really comfortable with gay marriage" going to help your cause? Likely not. It may well just make a bunch of people think you're an asshole and that, by extension, gay marriage is something endorsed by assholes. Similarly, "Lower taxes are fucking stupid, lern 2 econ dood" isn't really a convincing argument
On the other hand, engaging someone like antivaxxers or creationists in a technical argument is mostly just going to get you drowned into pseudoscientific idiocy that's impossible to effectively argue against anyway. Bets bet to combat those is to establish that the whole concept is so provably asinine that discussing it is silly. It helps when the number of authorities who agree with you is in the high 90-percents.
Different tactics for different issues.
Religious tolerance is a byproduct of the West's centuries of experience with massive religious wars, official legal religious persecution and forced conversation. It's a very solid practice not to immediately judge someone based on their religion. People are surprisingly diverse individuals.
But... A religion is an organization with set dogma of beliefs. Some of those beliefs can be actively hateful and harmful to society. There's even a mechanism for members of a religion who disagree with immoral beliefs held by others of their faith - a schism. Our ideas of human rights go back to the day when Martin Luther penned his dissent to the door. It is perfectly okay to say a religion, its leaders and its beliefs are shit.
Screaming matches accomplish nothing.
Again, you and I just have the bar for harm set differently, which is really what this disagreement is about.
Not "whether you can be intolerant and silence someone's beliefs", because you agree that this is something that is sometimes necessary!
You just have a higher threshold than others. Although, interestingly, you have different bars, because it doesn't take much for you to become intolerant of, say, social justice people.
I would argue that the harm to you from social justice warriors is pretty low, to the point that you shouldn't really worry about this phenomenon.
This isn't really like...a criticism. It is just my point here that we all have different bars, and tolerance is about accepting that people have different bars just as much as it is accepting that people have different beliefs.
I want to print this out and mail it to people the next time a feminist complains about a game and someone says "the solution to art you don't like isn't less art, it is more art"
You do realize up until the recent debt ceiling fight this worked exceptionally well for the republican party. They have shut down the government and prevented anything good from being done and got the sequester passed. So what are you saying?
pleasepaypreacher.net
This seems to assume that shouting down and mocking anti-vaxxers is the best way to stop the anti-vaccination movement. Like if you shout at them and ridicule them enough eventually the bad opinion will go away.
And historically, it just doesn't seem to work all that well. If anything, the anti-vax movement seem to have become more vocal in recent years. So have MRAs. If you're liberal, Fox News likely ridicules you all the time - has that caused you to become more conservative? So where's the evidence that this method actually works?
I'm unconvinced that the primary goal of ridiculing these movements isn't catharsis for the one doing the ridicule. It doesn't seem to change their opinions or reduce the size of the movement much. If anything, seeing a big group yelling at and ridiculing a small group seems to push things in the other direction - people who don't understand the issue can naturally end up wanting to side with the underdog.