How should the understanding of free speech change when we realize that citizens have limitations on theie ability to recieve information?
There simply is no time and interest for most people to get really informed on a subject and it cannot be expected of them.
1)not all people can get informed enough on a subject to be able to reject false and dangerous ideas.
2)people have cognitive biases making them susepctible to certain persuasion tactics.
3)certain ideas, even when based on complete lies, can do and will cause certain idividuals to become violent and even kill others.
In some sense the idea of completely free speech is akin to the idea of a completely unregulated market that will somehow sort itself out to the benefit of all.
The problem is that the final ideally sortned point of a market and the ideal point of a perfeclty informed citizenry never comes and the the road to this unreachable goal is full of fluctuations that endanger human life and property.
On another note, do you think the correctness or truth of an idea is related to how fitting it is with methods of persuasion? I.e. if an idea is persuasive it might still be said to be "correct"
in some context even when the arguments are based on factually incorrect information.
In some sense the idea of completely free speech is akin to the idea of a completely unregulated market that will somehow sort itself out to the benefit of all.
The problem is that the final ideally sortned point of a market and the ideal point of a perfeclty informed citizenry never comes and the the road to this unreachable goal is full of fluctuations that endanger human life and property.
If that is your argument we should live the free market another look since unregulated speech is working out pretty well in the long term.
It's not practical to try to squelch free speech. Unless you have some omnipresent censor able instantly analyze and interpret the "value" of all speech everywhere, the most practical policy is to allow free speech except under certain explicit circumstances. Not to mention if your power in any way stems from the will of the people, and they resent heavy-handed censorship, you are taking a gamble they will put up with you. Now if your power doesn't stem from the will of the people, just prohibit all speech, I suppose.
>>1361912
Really? so isis spamming propoganda and persuading teens to go fight for it is ok? /pol/ neo nazi fabricated photographs and false quotes are ok?
This all results in violence.
In what sense is it working out? In the sense that we have not destroyed the human race?
#3 is true of literally any idea, aside from perhaps radical nonviolence (and that will just probably lead to your own death). Are you trying to make some type of neoliberalism argument against free speech, that a market needs to be regulated to make sure it's economically efficient? The only way I can see justifying your ideas is if you value GDP growth above everything else.
>>1361888
>dangerous ideas
heresy
>>1361888
>How should the understanding of free speech change when we realize that citizens have limitations on theie ability to recieve information?
Read Brave New World. Based Huxley grappled with this very question 90 years ago.
>>1361888
>do you think the correctness or truth of an idea is related to how fitting it is with methods of persuasion?
You could persuade a child of many things that are not reality.
This is a major Sophist fallacy.
>citizens have limitations on their ability to receive information
This is true of all people. Consider the possibility that all humans are severely delimited in the cognitive sense, and that it is only by working together in freedom that we can even begin to approach full knowledge of the truth.
Why should some be allowed to speak their minds while others be silenced? Is it cause those who are allowed to talk just so happen to agree with you?
Who made you the supreme arbiter of lies, grand inquisitor of the universal Truth?
>people have cognitive biases making them susceptible to certain persuasion tactics.
All people.
>not all people can get informed enough on a subject to be able to reject false and dangerous ideas.
What makes an idea false?
>certain ideas, even when based on complete lies, can do and will cause certain idividuals to become violent and even kill others.
You have this backwards. Humans are naturally violent creatures, we use ideas to rationalize and into the systematization of our violence. Cognition and rationalization is a secondary process, not a primary one. We are animals.
>>1361938
So what i am asking is not to explain what cannot be done but asking of you to think of new modes of approaching the problem. IF you HAD to, under threat of death, find a new solution or approach what would you do? how would you do it? what new ideas would you present on the topic?
Saying impossible and lets have things as they are is always easy.
>>1361967
I raed brave new world. Its a nice thought experiment but is not really relevant to this dicussion.
>>1362013
You know whats wrong with your post? you ARE arguing with me...You are trying to pretned what i wrote is somehow personal or im trying to convince you of somehing.
There is no audfiacne here to clap for you buddy. The point is to just have a discussion.
The point is to engage with the arguments, give them the benefit of the doubt, not be small minded and attack everything.
Instead of writing "This is a major Sophist fallacy." try to giev the idea the benefit of the doubt none the less and see if somehing interesting can come out of it.
>Why should some be allowed to speak their minds while others be silenced? Is it cause those who are allowed to talk just so happen to agree with you?
>Who made you the supreme arbiter of lies, grand inquisitor of the universal Truth?
This is polemics. Maybe you should author your posts then? So we know who to give credit to?
Seriously, why are you trying to win a debate instead of having a dicussion?
>>1362100
faggot
lrn2spel
>>1361949
What do you believe would be a morally superior alternative?
I would say it is working out in the sense that the risks inherent to uncensored freedom of speech are far preferable to the infringing of everyone's individual liberty in the name of security.
>>1361888
You make great points. Still believe in freedom of speech, for the simple fact that regulating speech is fraught with potential dangers, and no one can be totally trusted with it.
>1)not all people can get informed enough on a subject to be able to reject false and dangerous ideas.
While the general population cannot prevent this, you can introduce most people to the ideas of
>critical thought
>withholding judgment
>doing research
Most won't be willing to do these things, but once they are acquainted with these ideas there's little excuse.
>>1362239
But perhaps what is needed is not to stop or infringe on free speech but to do something else. channnel information, structure information better etc..I dont know, thats the point of the question, to think of new things, not explain the options we figured out in the past.
Especially with instant communications and the internet these things need to be revisited.
If we regulated speech, a lot of ideas that are correct but politically incorrect would be suppressed.
And bad information leads to bad policy.
>>1362276
Welcome to propaganda 101 m8
>>1362257
And yet, despite how common sense and good these ideas seem to be they are not really implemented and become a apart of the thought of most people.
Also what is improtant about new media is that internet forums, imageboards, youtube comments are all designed a specific way. The specific design of a structure and framework of information exchange has a baring on what sort of information will be exchanged and in what way.
For examle, you cannot usually expect youtube comments to include detailed and thoughtfull discussions because the way youtube comments are designed simnply does not carter to this sort of discussion.
an even more limiting medium is twitter that actively limits the amount of characters you can write per post.
>>1362283
Everyone's worried about "muh political incorrectness"
But what's really important is the censorship of knowledge. Restricting the ability to learn to a privileged elite, secrecy regarding new information, and withholding of facts from the general population is antithetical to educational freedom.
Who cares whether billy is allowed to scream "Blacks have low IQs" or whatever.
>>1362292
But you can say to an extent that all oppinions are propoganda. Calling something propoganda is simply a statment of the one calling it porpoganda of how strongly or in what way one disagrees with the statment.
>>1362298
Your point is?
>>1362298
But the thing is that many people do not want ot look for new information.
We have psychological motives that stop us from recievign certain kinds of information.
Sometimes its a good thing, sometimes its a bad thing. But when it is good and when is it bad?
you can say that anyone's absorbed information is connected to that person's psycholigcal biases. Its just that some psychological biases as also some types of information are more conductive towards reaching certain goals.
>>1362276
Have you read the Dewey-Lippman debates? They happened a century ago, Lippman won out politically, and your ideas have basically already been implemented. Not sure what more you want to do, aside from actually banning what is considered to be incorrect thought or speech.
>>1361888
>There simply is no time and interest for most people to get really informed on a subject
Bullshit, there's just as much time as there always have been. You can't do everything all at once so most people just stick to entertaining themselves and staying fed. It's simply lack of interest that keeps people from becoming informed. So many things vie for your attention now-a-days, you have to make a concerted effort. There's more availability to knowledge (to everything really) now than ever before. As I said you have to pick your battles but if you are uninformed about something it is entirely your own fault.
>>1362313
The reason people want to preserve freedom of speech is sad because most are more interested in spitting venom or their particular brand of misinformation than they are interested in preserving the ability to tell the truth.
>>1362328
But today, we see that politicians do look at public oppinion and public oppinion has become more evident and has more ways of expressing itself.
Look at brexit as a ciontemporary example.
Essentially a poll that is gonna change britain in many important ways.
>>1362345
People want to preserve freedom of speech because sometimes the unpopular guy is right.
Or do you think our politically correct elites are right about everything?
>>1362319
But who determines what those "certain goals" are? Obviously certain kinds of speech are going to get in the way of achieving specific goals. You're assuming their is some universal good that we all should be working towards, and that psychological biases which work against that when it comes to speech and information need to be curtailed; ones that work for the goals should be encouraged.
>>1362344
There is no point in assigning blame.
OK, perhaps if there are too many distractions those should be put under scruiteny? Maybe we need to do something about it if most people cant deal with so much distraction?
Imagine tw osituations, a home stuffed with sweet foods and a home that has only healthy unprocced food.
In which house will it be statisticly easier to loose weight?
People have limitations, physical, emotional, psychological.
We have to deal with that and calibrate it as a society to get the results we desire.
It is like someone who understands that there is a limit to his own will power and thus he stops buying sweets so he wont get tempted to eat sweets when he is at home.
>>1362356
I didnt assume anything. "what goals" is also part of the discussion.
>>1362276
I think it's a good motivation, but any institutional solutions would be inherently authoritarian, and probably do more harm than if you did nothing. As soon as you enable an authority to decide how to distribute or allow access to information in any way you infringe on the rights of others.
>>1362347
That wasn't the point of Lippman's ideas; his idea was that a central group of government officials and experts should convey information that they deem relevant to the people in order to shape "public opinion". He in fact rejected that "the public" existed at all, and certainly didn't believe that polls conveyed public opinion in any value-free way. Instead, he favored giving people information that his theoretical group of government-expert-media elites deemed relevant, and then giving people a chance to vote one way or another on specific issues.
>>1362373
Well, do you think once the goals are set by a society, whether in a democratic fashion or not, does everyone have to abide by those goals? If I advocate for a communist revolution in 1948 in the US including the overthrow of the government, should I not be allowed to spread my ideas because my goals run counter to the goals of the public at large and could very well lead to a violent revolution if I persuade enough people?
>>1362378
We as a scoeity decide what rights we give each other. So when we decide total free speech is not a right then its not a right and not allowing complete fre speech isnot an infringment on one's rights.
A society always infrignes on the DESIRES of its citiznes. For exampoe my desire to take something that does not belong to me, or hurt another for fun.
Maybe it doesnt have to be "institutinal" or maybe it does. that depends. Certain things can only be stopped when there are official laws agains them because otherwise they are too tempting.
and who makes official laws? the body that can see them through, the body that has a monopoy on physical force or economic force.
A sttructure that can dull out punishment and reward.
Are you sayign that we should make government self emerging? as in somehow create a way for society to come to conclusions and descisions without official representation and a heirarchy of depednancy? a more fluid system?
What would it be? a digital direct democracy? What are the problem with a direct "digital" democracy even though its more possible now then ever?
why cant we relegate all functions of the governemt to all of us in the form of a virtual digital structure to which we are connected to through our computers and mobiel devices?
>>1362394
OK, but in today;s scoiety convering up and stopping the flow of information is much harder.
So something has to change or we need to rethink these issues.
>>1362415
This is actually what a lot of anarchists argue for, direct democracy based on whatever information people have available to them, and if they don't like the decision, fine, they can go someplace else because, hey, it's anarchy and there are no laws or national borders constraining people.
>>1362422
Why do you want to stop the flow of information though? Because it's leading people to makes decisions that you disapprove of? Don't get me wrong, I think there's a lot of faulty information out there, but I don't want a situation like North Korea where the people are cut off from the rest of the world because then they might receive "Western imperialist propaganda" which might make them question the authority of the government and engage in a violent rebellion. Even the fast transmission of true information can lead people to violence.
>>1362471
I dont awnt to nessecarry stop certain flows of information but that might be a viable option. Maybe channel it? maybe rethink what information means and how it flows and what certain flows of it produce in people.
We gotta understand that korean perhaps limits information from the outside but we as a global society do not have an external information flow corrcting us. We as simply a better version of north korea in the sense of being stuck within ourselves, have to figure a way of circulating informations or types of information in a way that would brgin better results whatever that means.
The flow of information both decides what results are deemed good and the ways to rach these results.
we live in a closed ifnormation system that opens gates to new information within itself.
Korea is structres in a way that does not allow the genration of new information in a way that would deliver positive change that would better the lives of the citizenry.
Westenr ifnromation and informartion delivery structures do but they also have flows of informaiton that are regressive.
Those calling for chaos or violence. Or perhaps they are not regresive? perhaps we want say muslim violence?
Perhaops we need to categorize infomration into different types or perhaps we need to create systems that make sure that information flows freely but deciding and rejecting false infomration or regressiev ideas is easier.
here comes the question of how peopel accept information and how they accept information that critics the information they themselves alrady have.
There is a curent systme of information spread that causes certain outcomes, perhaps it needs to be modified in some why to improve it? we have to criticize virtual strucutres of information delivery and sharing like facebook, twitter to understand what sort of information spread they promote as part of their structuring and what such ifnroamtions leads to. what values arise from such systems? what groups does it create?
>>1362524
But isn't that what we already do, anon? If someone wants to read ISIS propaganda, they don't just turn on CNN and it stars telling them ISIS's teachings, instead they're showing horrible scenes of terror attacks and government officials talking about how ISIS is evil and they are trying to destroy them. If someone really wants to seek out ISIS propaganda, Communist newsletters, or KKK websites they really have to go seeking that kind of thing out. The information is already in the different channels that you proposed, that's basically what media is.
>>1362297
>And yet, despite how common sense and good these ideas seem to be they are not really implemented and become a apart of the thought of most people.
Right. Just like you can't implement these ideas, you can't implement regulation of free speech because people doing the regulating would be unreliable.
>>1362354
I don't. But some people these days seem to think the politically incorrect agenda is right about everything.
I see regurgitated crime "statistics" about minorities that cite no resources, resurgence in antisemitism, conspiracy theories abound, and all this is assumed to be true because "the politically correct establishment doesn't want you to say this"
>>1362566
But that is fro you, an english speakign westerner.
For muslims its part of their internet arabic exprience.
Meaning anti westenr conspriacy theroies, hatred of jews and of other non proper muslims.
>>1362328
>Dewey-Lippman debates
Any recommendable sources on this I would greatly appreciate the chance to understand such a debate
>>1362734
Of course they aren't right about everything. No one is. But this is completely irrelevant to the discussion.
That they are right some of the times is a pretty important reaso why they should not be silenced.
free speech don't change people's views. people just listen to people who they already agree with in the first place. rarely people do challenge their views and almost always it ends up in nihilism.
>>1361967
Am I the only one who didn't think the BNW universe seemed all that bad?
>>1364289
>le BNW is actually a utopia
Believe it or not that's an actual /lit/ meme, along with Holden raped Phoebe
>>1361888
Do you want fascism? Because that is what you are asking for.
To be fair, I wouldn't mind fascism if it was about technological progress.
>>1361888
The problem is, if you're going to start limiting people's rights on the basis that they are stupid, there's no end to the limitations you can place.
Which is already the motive behind some of our most destructive laws.
Well, this is why our society is formed as it is with representative democracy and academia. It's the job of politicians to get informed, and it's academia's job to come up with new ideas and sort through them by reason.
Nothing is more important than well-functioning institutions.
>>1362319
>We have psychological motives that stop us from recievign certain kinds of information.
Cull the weak
>>1361949
>mention /pol/
>proposes literally fascism
Fucking disgusting, you have some kind of persecution complex and are mentally ill on top of that.
>>1362298
>Everyone's worried about "muh political incorrectness"
As if it was truly censored. They equate criticism with censorship and thus free speech becomes a blunt weapon to supress criticism towards their shitty, cancerous ideas.
What else would you expect from a group of people faking concern over a minority-won right?
>>1364844
This is a load of bullshit.
Criticism of politically correct opinion is obviously needed. I doubt any free speech advocate is against this.
Trying to destroy the careers of people because you dislike their opinion is not good. As is trying to silence them.
>>1361888
go read pic related and Carlyle and then get back to us
>>1362734
most people dont hold /pol/ tier views
Quite the contrary
They either are completely apathetic or are quite docile to mainstream media narratives, only adding to that narrative their own personal irrational bias and emotional baggage, whatever that may be
Mainstream media usually makes use of those bias and emotional baggage to manage and herd opinions of the mass.
I agree that lately we've seen a ressurgence of a strong reaction and refusal of mainstream narratives, mostly because we have a growing severe crisis of confidence in the ruling apparatus, and therefore that other type of misinformation that breeds in places like /pol/ slowly take a more center stage.
Basically you end up seeing a substitution of a type of misinformation for another, both based on personal bias and emotionality.
>>1364389
except they arent working correctly anymore.
The structure of academia in the west is increasingly more counterproductive to actual knowledge but increasingly supportive of status quo narratives - an epistemological crisis.
The field of economics in its current state is a perfect example of it. "The dismal science" is simply incapable of offering any seriously credible analysis of economic processes. Its completely dependent of political bias and opinions (as it always as been).
The problem is that now, academia economics are central in the structuring of policy, and it is failing his job completely.
