Comment on YSK: That nazis Don't Actually Believe in Free Speech
notsoshaihulud@lemmy.world 1 year agoI really find it statistically baffling how many times that is the first response…sophisticated sounding titles works for you until you actually have to explain things.
The point of my post is that some of the loudest proponents have ulterior motives. No more, but definitely no less. I’m not here to relitigate the limits of free speech no matter how hard you want to steer the discussion in that direction.
On the other hand, if you come to discussions with this many preconceived notions and generalizations wrapped in a metric ton of condescension, then perhaps you might be the driver of your own “statistical bafflement”.
The point of my post is that some of the loudest proponents of free speech have ulterior motives. No more, but definitely no less.
You’ve provided no supporting evidence of this. The loudest, or most successful supporters, appear to have been Jewish attorneys that advocated & won cases on free speech allowing even Nazis to gather, march, speak, etc. Are you suggesting these Jews were actually crypto-Nazis in disguise?
I know reading comprehension is harder when you’ve already made up your mind about what I think.:)
lmmarsano@lemmynsfw.com 1 year ago
So what? Free speech is still right: everyone should fervently defend it. Whether they’re sincere about it or not, free speech is indispensable to a liberal democracy.
The problem isn’t free speech. The problem is people who want to take it all away. If you fall into the trap of abandoning basic values from the enlightenment when they make it inconvenient, then you play into their game & help them set back society.
notsoshaihulud@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Look, statements like this are very easy to make but nearly impossible to implement in the era of LLM-powered bots riding the Algorithm. Unless you simply give free rein to the bots, which is often the goal and ultimately eliminates actual humans’ free speech. I don’t pretend that I have a perfect solution, but there is sufficient historical evidence to point out the threads’ original statement on absolutistic terms. For the rest, I’ve used the word “some” because not everybody has ulterior motives, but the most motivated ones in the present era tend to.
lmmarsano@lemmynsfw.com 1 year ago
That’s just technology & fearmongering. Socrates was critical of writing out of concerns it would deteriorate minds & make superficial thinkers. Critics were concerned the printing press would lead to widespread moral degradation with the abundance of low-quality literature. People criticized television & media for brain rot.
Guess what you’re the next iteration of?
Technologies change, yet good principles don’t change with them.
You know what you can do with free speech? More free speech. No one has a monopoly on LLM, bots, or algorithms. If people were inclined, they could launch these technologies to counter messages they oppose. People can choose to tune out & disregard expressions. Much more can be done with free speech.
notsoshaihulud@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Technologies and ethics continuously change and adapt to new technologies, and I’m not interested in discussing the analogies of going from codexes to printed books vs. going from printed hard copies to human-human interactions being hijacked by human-passing bots, because to me these are evidently not comparable.
The fact that this discussion is taking place on Lemmy and not Xitter tells plenty about the actual complexities of this story.