Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by orf 2288 days ago
So by your definition if you call someone an idiot and they punch you in the face for saying that, you don’t have freedom of speech?

Right. It’s freedom of consequences from a specific entity, the government, not freedom from consequences in general.

1 comments

Re 1: Yes.

Re 2: No. It's just the usual implementation.

An absolutist definition like that is completely and utterly meaningless unless the only person you talk to is yourself. And even then there are concequences for what you say to yourself, even though they might not be externally visable immediately. And if you want to get really ridiculous concequences of saying anything involve movements of air and possibly particles of spit. Maybe even spreading an infection.

So by your definition freedom of speech cannot exist, or you need to refine your meaning of "concequences". That refined meaning is accepted as conceqences from the government.

Any other meaning is senseless because people are free agents and may respond to your speech in any way they feel fit.