Have you ever heard the phrase "argument from incredulity?"

Again though, obscenity laws seem to provide a pretty obvious counter-example to your assertion here. With the caveat that they would require that the interpretation reflect community standards.

If we go back to the contextualization argument that's been made some dozen times or whatever, it's also quite possible to elucidate differences between these terms. In the context of a debate about racism, calling someone racist makes a point that's relevant to the discussion. Calling someone a fatass does not, even if they are in fact fat! When we say that "racist" isn't always just a personal attack, that's what we mean. It is still, in a sense, an attack. But it's also potentially part of a reasonable debate. Same with sexist, or homophobe. Jerk, like fatass, is never actually relevant to the debate itself. It might be relevant to a meta-debate about civility :P

Sure it could. If you told me you weigh 400lbs, I could mock you for having a big fat ass, and that could easily be defended as a "not attack" but meant to inspire introspection at your eating habits or whatever you claim justifies calling someone a viciously intolerant racist does. It's too ambiguous. Does not pass the smell test.

That is just fine apparently, but if I responded that fly is a horrible, vicious lying moron, so enormously stupid that it's a wonder he can dress himself, who agrees with his mother that Mexicans ruin neighborhoods and institutional racism is a Jew hoax, I assume I'd take a ban.

Exactly.

Foldn,

In what context is calling someone stupid a substantive argument against the point being made the same way that "That's racist!" is a substantive argument against "I think none of the black witnesses to Michael Brown's shooting can be trusted"?

The sooner you see just how utterly wrongheaded the idea is that you should censor thoughts based on your viewpoint, the better. I'd better get to work on my free speech thread.

Fyp

In precisely the same way as you saying 2+2=5, and me replying that you're stupid. It's not hard. Why not just attack the argument, say, "that's stupid." Or "why would you think that?" Or no, 2+2 is clearly 4" Why is a personal attack helpful in one situation, but not in the another?

You are making my argument for me. My argument is that context changes how egregious an attack is and whether it deserves moderation. I agree that in context of a discussion about health and fitness, calling me fat (I could stand to lose a few pounds) might not be egregious. It probably depends a bit on how you phrase it. Of course in all honesty I don't really care at all to see you get banned for calling me a fatass, I'm only defending the idea that moderation decisions can reasonably take into account this sort of context. Which gets to the next point:

I've never used the phrase "viciously intolerant racist." You shouldn't have to blatantly mischaracterize my position to try to make a point. I never claimed (for example) that no use of the term racist as a personal attack should be moddable. I just claimed that your position that every use of the term should be moddable seems wrong, and explained why some uses seem unproblematic to me.

I have never made the claim that Fly's posts are fine. I'm not interested in debating the moderation of specific posts in this thread. I make no claims that Wookie's moderation decisions are perfect or that Fly's posts are unobjectionable.

Fine then. The point of the "attack the argument, not the arguer" rule isn't that someone somewhere might actually do some good by attacking the arguer, or be able to claim it wasn't really meant as an attack. The point is that most of the time it is very pointless to get personal, distracts from the arguments, and clogs up the discussion with invective. Like PU.

And I think it would be pretty easy to enforce more equally, in a way that might even be constitutional

FoldN, why won't you answer my questions about the pms?

Foldn: FWIW, the actual result of the "what if 2+2 was a limited public forum" argument probably has nothing to do with evaluating whether something is a personal attack. There is no personal attack exemption to the 1st amendment. Most likely we'd still be allowed to call racists racist. The only probable difference is you couldn't be censored for saying racist stuff unless it was also obscene or violated some other time, place, or manner restriction that survived scrutiny. In other words, it might look more like Unchained. I'm not sure this is the actually satisfying outcome you want.

Bingo. FoldN is a fierce safe space advocate here in the politics forum. His personal vision of a safe space is a place where neo-Nazi propaganda and commenting on lucky ducky slaves is fair game, but calling someone a racist should be met with censure and punishment.

What about responding to the personal attacks from fly with personal attacks on fly?

Is there any reasonable legal process that can allow the former but disallow the later?

That's why I picked "public forum" something we discussed earlier itt. The government is allowed to put certain restrictions on speech in a public forum so long as they are viewpoint neutral, like for example, in the link you added they gave the example that use of a megaphone could be banned as long as it was not allowed for one group over another based on viewpoint. I'm not going to pretend to be an ACLU attorney anymore, but it should be apparent that this fits the same sort of reasoning. Whether I could actually lawyer it up is not the point. There is a moral basis behind freedom of speech we should all understand better.

Probably not for a forum in which strict scrutiny under the first amendment would apply. Quite obviously yes for a private forum.

Wait, censorship is a grave threat to liberalism and democracy itself, but you don't want Unchained?

If Fly ever publishes a compilation of his posts, this would be a great blurb for the back cover.

While clearly a ****show PU is actually a much better forum to discuss racism, sexism, and so on than this one, for the obvious reason that the "racists" get the megaphone too, so at least they will argue there a bit.

But anyway, again:

Then go discuss racism in Unchained? I mean, this forum has never purported to welcome all viewpoints equally. You've also never stopped begging the question w.r.t. what constitutes an attack.

The idea that Foldn may be holding back on profound insights regarding critical race theory, because he is worried that the mods of some 2+2 bit poker forum might get a little frisky, delights me to no end.

Again, take it up with Mason and the Sklansky's.

They're the ones that don't want hate speech all over their website. Id personally be fine with letting all the racist idiots post what they want in Unchained so that I can point, mock, and laugh at them (not a FoldN style safe space for racists mind you, we'd still laugh at them and call them idiots, but sure, let your friends post whatever they want there)

However, it is sort of obvious to anyone outside of the SMP refugee camp as to why a commercial website might not be so happy about FoldN's merry band of friends posting neo-Nazi propaganda and "intellectual" discussion on why Africans have low IQs.

FoldN is, of course, welcome to start FoldNrapistsandracists.com and have all the free flowing racially charged speech his heart desires because, like the Koala, his free speech rights still exist unfettered.

There's probably a valid idea in that, leaving aside the goofily polemic use of "safe space" and "intellectual space". I'd say there's even possibly some valid criticism. I once complained that a poster ate a racist ban before I was done with them, for example. On the other hand, this is also still a good point:

On the subject of how to create a good forum for political discussion, you're not really getting an argument that your principles are wrong. You're getting an argument that your desired application of those principles seems to go too far to protect the ability of the worst posters to make bad posts. Those posts are bad often not just because they have the wrong view, but because they express those views in a very objectionable way.

Unless FoldN can explain these pms, I think we have to assume that he's not acting in good faith. #pmghazi

He's never explained what intellectual argument we couldn't explore either, but Im not holding my breath.

It's pretty clear he'd rather post his flag of victory on the fact that I haven't lived up to his misguided and hollow call for rigid absolutism rather than actually arrive at a pragmatic solution.

The pragmatic solution is simple, enforce the rules equally in a way that preserves the fundamental right of free speech for everyone.

I honestly don't know what new knowledge would come of it if many of you were to engage in a fair debate on racism, sexism, etc. What I do know is many of you have widely different views on racism from what's commonly known about it, and I expect much of it makes a lot of sense. I know I've managed to learn a lot from many of you. But there is still tons of disagreement on what it is and what to do about it. I wonder if many of you self-named anti-racists could admit to yourselves that you have some things wrong, and that some of the people you think are racist have some things right?

Part of the first podcast with Jonathan Rauch I'll go over discusses the liberal scientific quest for knowledge, and how the idea of freedom of speech, especially unpopular speech, was a groundbreaking moment in history, how the quest for knowledge is never finished, and we should never stop questioning even the most uncomfortable and sacred ideas.