Sure, but take something like anti-vax. It's harmful. It's almost certainly objectively false. It's sourced back to outright fraud. Assuming you (or any other pro-censorship person) want this to be censored, then I have a series of questions, starting with:

At what point did it become censorable? It started with a paper in a legit high-profile medical journal.

Fair enough. Ironically, I think I am more of a cultural relativist than you are. To a certain extent, I basically think it is all self-serving bull****; so we should be careful throwing out the bull**** we currently have (which we at least knows works reasonably well) for some other bull**** we have no idea if it works or not. I guess that is called pragmatism.

Edit: There are of course limits. I am not going to try to argue Trump is a good, moral President with a big heart, regardless of how well the economy is doing.

Works for me, keeping in mind the last sentence. The addendum is: some bull**** is definitely better than other bull**** :P

Whatever else you think of Toothsayer, he really is a great troll. That line about Trump having a big heart is seriously great trolling, and I was really laughing out loud when I read it, which I never do.

[My Bold]


First bold: Worshiping Plato? "Go astray from the good". I call a foul. Chez can give you a briefing; I already pointed out the error.


Second bold: clairvoyance is very, very difficult - except if you are a prophet. Are you a prophet Well Named? If so your untitled needs changing to reflect this new mission. Anticipation of presumably foreseeable problems (off the rails) I admit is very useful* - And that is one of the very reasons why freedom of expression is so fundamental to a "good society". And feeds back into my first point.


* and sometimes very hard if not impossible to anticipate or forestall once started - see for example the creation of The Praetorian Guard. A very valuable lesson.

PS> I vote that we add Meletus as your middle name.

When "good people' are being hurt or perhaps even just made to feel uncomfortable. Or to be blunt - censorable at the whimsy of "those that know". See Plato.

Re: "the good" -- I was just riffing on 6ix. I wouldn't normally use exactly that language, and I'm not trying to be very precise. I hoped the gist would be evident.

But, re: predicting the future -- I'm guessing I didn't actually make my point very clearly, because I don't understand your response.

Here's a restatement. I was reading the conversation like this:

And then my follow-up was that it's clearly worth keeping in mind what we deem as desirable and undesirable as far as making social policy goes. The concept of value-neutral politics doesn't really make sense to me. But it's also good (to the counter-point) to have some built-in resiliency in institutions, and value-neutral policies around freedom of expression have some value in that sense, especially taking into account the reality of how actual regulation works and who enforces it and how institutions change over time. In other words I think the counter-point has some validity as well.

Is that clearer?

Yes. Thank you. I popped in the middle not realizing the full context and the exchange. My fault. I still like my spew though, even if you don't deserve it.

I thought Zeno was saying to take your platonic ideal and shove it but now I'm not so sure.

It's not particularly murky or difficult in moral/political terms. We each get to decide our moral/legal views on the issue and the legitimacy of the law is conferred by a functioning democracy.

Frankly it's really only the USA that struggles with this to the point of having the wrong conversation. The fact free speech is good isn't in dispute but it also isn't sufficient because harmful speech is bad. The real conversation is on how to deal with the boundary where the two principles of free speech vs avoiding harm to others collide. these boundaries are always a bit murky - so what?

I think you're going down the same wrong path that Zeno did. On stuff like vax, climate change et it's not about censorship in terms of not allowing nonsense to be said. It's about making sure that claims are challenged appropriately.

So in the example I gave of Nigel Lawson. The BBC were criticised for allowing him to make claims (the earth was cooling iirc) without challenge. The regulator was not objecting to Lawson being allowed to speak and nor is anyone suggesting he should be criminalised for that speech* - it's the BBC who are accountable here.

[Wakefield is in a totally different category. He was struck off and many might think that what he did was criminal (or should be)]


*there's some niting possible on that point because iirc he is a paid lobbyist and there could be rules on that but it's the general idea

So organizations can suffer penalties for Not saying something (giving challenge) that in some ideal way is supposed to be said? I'll let that question dangle out in space and await details.

The Vac thing is entangled with initial and ongoing science research and follow up, but I'll let Tom give his say- I'm not familiar with the details.

Yep that's how it works and it's largely about extending that to he new media (social etc). Accept it's not about the way it was said, the problem was the BBC allowing it to be said without a suitable challenge on the basis of facts.

I've no real idea what the objection is to this. The usual ones I hear from the USA is it's impossible (manifestly incorrect) or it's unconstitutional. Is there anything else?

That standard is ridiculous for even more reasons, but sticking to my initial line of questioning, at what point did it become actionable for the BBC to not challenge the claims.

I don't know why you think it is ridiculous. BBC makes the decisions at the time and the regulator addresses complaints taking action where considered appropriate.The regulator is accountable to the government and the government are accountable to us (via parliament). It's a very good approach

I don't think the Wakefield issue was one of free speech at all. It was also far more serious than a free speech issue, not least because it was initially credible.

You're not answering the question at all. The cooling claim would have been completely credible in, say, 1955. Or is there any point in even exploring this line? Will you just concede Zeno's effective point that "What they're responsible for challenging is what will get them punished for not challenging, and this is entirely up to what rustles enough people's jimmies and not anything even resembling an objective standard, or even requirong any real likelihood of the statement being false if the citizenry is deluded enough"

If i'm not answering then it's because I don't understand the question. What has 1955 got to with whether the BBC in 2018 should have challenged Lawson on his climate change claims.

Zeno's point is both true and sort of silly. Sure the BBC has some accountability to the regulators but I'm not sure what you mean unless you also mean that the usa constitution was down to whatever rustled the non-objective jimmies centuries ago.

At some point in the past, that statement would have (should have) been fine. If it wasnt in 2018, then at some point, it transitioned from acceptable to not challenge to unacceptable to not challenge. When was that, or why was that?

Who knows? does it matter or is it just one of Zeno's paradoxes?

Your exact answer? No, it doeant matter. I'm just showing that your system doesnt even pretend to have standards. If you aired programming in Korea, you'd literally be in favour of your branch there getting bitchslapped for not challenging somebody who said Fan Death was total nonsense. GTFO.

Tell me why it matters and I might care.

Of course it has standards. It's no regulation that means no standards - kind of by definition

You have no problem with some entity being forced against its will to present objectively false claims it doesnt believe to counter an objectively true statement that it does believe?

(Fan death is as objectively false as anything can be)

Of course I object to that.

I'm still not sure what your point is - can you relate it to the BBC being found to have an obligation to challenge Lawson's calims

If you're just saying that the USA system is better than the one in N.korea then sure of course I agree

Ok, you say you object to it, but you realize the system you're advocating for produces that exact result when a false belief is widespread, right?

US free speech laws aren't absolute - for instance libel isn't legally allowed. Insofar as we are arguing over edge cases such as hate speech, the American system doesn't say that you can never ban it. Instead, it says that in order to ban it, you must pass a Constitutional amendment doing so. That is, in order to protect the speech rights of minority groups, we require a 3/4 majority in favor of banning that form of speech instead of a simple majority. So your arguments about leaving this up to democracy doesn't address the issue here - the question is whether it should be left up to a majority vote. Seems to me like many questions are not best decided by a majority vote (Brexit being a recent example).