[quazeekotl]

Most of those ideas didn't die out because one day people found out about them, and then we put an end to them.

Most of them _everyone_ knew about for thousands, or even tens of thousands of years, why didn't this "sunlight" disinfect them?

[tomhoward]

> Most of them _everyone_ knew about for thousands, or even tens of thousands of years

This is false.

For most of the past several thousand years of history, "knowledge" has been imposed and speech has been restricted by religious and/or political decree.

Freedom of speech, along with the value of the individual, are enlightenment values - i.e., they have only been around for a couple of hundred years, and even then only in a few parts of the world, and even then they have continued to be suppressed and assaulted at every opportunity.

But those of us who have been lucky enough to grow up in societies that have relatively high levels of freedom of speech and freedom of the individual can easily take these freedoms for granted.

But if you look at all the positive societal changes that are espoused by people who believe in liberal values: workers' rights, women's rights (to vote, work, refuse or leave marriage, own property, drive), equality and rights for racial/religious minorities, immigrants, the disabled, gay people, etc; these changes have happened first where there has been the greatest freedom of speech.

Yes I know it's unpleasant to hear speech that feels uncomfortable or dangerous, but be assured it is immeasurably better than the alternative.

Edit:

For what it's worth, I've been paying attention to the David Icke story since he first appeared on London Real a few weeks ago, and I'm a financial supporter of an investigative reporter who has gone deep researching and revealing the possibility that this whole thing looks like a financial scam by London Real.

It looks every bit like The Streisand Effect is at work here, and that YouTube's ban of Icke is only serving to amplify his signal, increase his following and generate huge amounts of money for London Real (and possibly Icke too).

So it's the Hydra myth playing out yet again. Be careful what you wish for.

[zozbot234]

Because "sunlight" includes the norms of a free and intellectually-open society, which didn't develop until well after those thousands of years. Censorship itself is not even that bad merely due to how it might deal with the YouTube fruitcake du jour; it's really, really bad because it's openly destructive of these hard-gained shared norms, in so many ways.

[quazeekotl]

Maybe, but the argument is that mere public existence of an idea effectively promotes correct ideas and demotes incorrect ideas.

That is absolutely not in evidence.

[WalterBright]

Sure it is. All kinds of ideas died when information became readily available, even when the authorities tried to suppress them.

For example, the idea of a nobility class.

[james-mcelwain]

Past results do not guarantee future performance.

[tomhoward]

This is a pretty low effort comment, but more importantly is conceding the several upthread assertions that freedom of speech has historically been effective at correcting bad ideas.

If your claim is that we shouldn't expect this to continue in the future, that's a whole new claim that you need to support.

[james-mcelwain]

I mean, a teleological view of history and ethics is just so absurd that it disturbs me that professed "rational" scientifically minded people believe it. There's no basis for believing just because things "tend" to get better that is in itself a causative argument about some intrinsic nature of humanity.

I mean, even the example used ("the noble class") is preposterous on face because:

1. The Russian Revolution? Germany 1849? Even the American Revolution? None of these are about ideas, or "shining the light on ignorance" -- they're about putting the nobility up against the wall. If there's some kind of teleology at play here, it's not that we thought about it in the marketplace of ideas long enough and decided to do away with the concept.

2. Nobility still exists! At best, this just means we live in a secular society, where we no longer believe the Word of God justifies massive inequality.

[zimpenfish]

> All kinds of ideas died when information became readily available > For example, the idea of a nobility class.

America literally has a nobility class right now. The UK isn't far off.

[WalterBright]

> America literally has a nobility class right now.

Literally nope. For example, there is no law that says the word of one group of people is worth more in court than another group. There are no laws saying only certain people can be in power based on their ancestors. There is no law enshrining divine right.

[zimpenfish]

> For example, there is no law that says the word of one group of people is worth more in court

And yet.

> There are no laws saying only certain people can be in power based on their ancestors.

And yet. Just because there are no explicit written laws does not mean this doesn't happen every single day in multiple ways.

[aantthony]

My comment wasn't about whether people knew these practices were occurring. People knew they were occurring.

The mere public existence of an idea (like in some dusty old book that nobody reads) is not sufficient to change majority option, no.

[aantthony]

Why has the goalpost moved from an idea dying out, to dying out within one day? And who is "we"?

> Most of them _everyone_ knew about for thousands, or even tens of thousands of years

That's not true. People didn't know about it. When the sunlight came, people changed their beliefs relatively quickly compared to how long the false beliefs were held. Sometimes within a few years, but generally within a generation.

[quazeekotl]

Do you really think people at large didn't know about hanging, slavery, human sacrifice, and ideas about a flat earth in societies where these ideas were applicable?

[aantthony]

I meant they didn't know the truth about them. They obviously knew that slavery was occurring.

[AnthonyMouse]

Not only that, the truth as it's taught in history books was relatively short-lived. Prior to mercantilism and the industrial revolution, slavery and serfdom were basically equivalent. There was a lord and you worked for them in exchange for room and board and protection. You might not love it, but there wasn't really anywhere else to go for anybody who couldn't raise a military force and become a lord themselves.

Then suddenly there were factories who would hire anybody who showed up and pay them real money and plantation workers started running off to work in the factories left and right. It was no longer that people stayed because they had no better option, they were then being forced to stay against their will. The dynamic changed. Chains and beatings entered the scene to keep slaves from running off. They did anyway, so their replacements had to be forcefully kidnapped because there were no longer any volunteers.

The whole thing collapsed and was dismantled in a relatively short period of time after that.

[james-mcelwain]

I mean, like many things, this just comes down to axioms that ground your meta-ethics. I don't find moral Platonism very convincing.

There's no natural inclination of humans towards justice or injustice, beyond the limits of our own psychology. To me, the idea that there is some internal teleology towards justice is absurd. These are material struggles and material gains that must be defended materially.

We should reject this kind of naive idealism.

[aantthony]

I also reject platonism. I really don't mean to imply changing these norms was easy, or is only a matter of putting the information out there disregarding material conditions and then just hoping for the best.

It seems that having free speech is a necessary, although not sufficient, condition to improve society. It's a principle worth defending.

[james-mcelwain]

I think that framing ("necessary but not sufficient") is a much more productive way that I wish free speech advocates would use more.

My opposition to censorship derives from the fact that it tends to require an unjustified hierarchy (i.e. the violence of the state).

However, I have a real problem with imparting some kind of magical quality to ideas. I'm particularly annoyed by the way in which free speech advocates act like social norms are a form of censorship. More specifically, that free speech requires platforming -- i.e., rejecting a freedom of association.

While I do think that the power companies like Google exert of society is well wroth investigating, in general I find that these are much weaker examples of the use of force to censor ideas.

[knzhou]

So you're arguing that once the public knows the truth... then the public will know the truth? Does sound like a rather weak claim, doesn't it?

[aantthony]

No.

stevebmark said "I've never seen a bad or immoral or harmful idea die out when more people learn about it and scrutinize it"

So I gave examples of some ideas that did in fact die out when people learned about them and scrutinized them. My argument was that it's naive to think censoring ideas this time will be on the right side of history.