[epgui]

Imagine you have free speech. Yay! Now what? Why was this so important again?

Free speech is not an end goal. It's a tool that serves a purpose. In the relationship between a powerful government and a collection of individually vulnerable citizens, it pushes the power balance farther toward the individual.

Is the goal to give all the power to the individual? No, that's not the goal. The goal is to have some sort of equilibrium between the powers of the government and the powers of individuals. The point of equilibrium is fuzzy and ill-defined, but it's characterized by an increase in stability.

The point is that free speech is not a sacred irreducible holy thing. It's an important thing that serves a purpose. It's not absolute. It's possible for something in a given situation to be more important than free speech.

[inglor_cz]

This is a very utilitarian point of view. I cannot say that I disagree hard, but free speech is more than just a tool.

It is part of human dignity, at least for some people: not to be muzzled by somebody else on the account that (s)he is of a) nobler birth, b) dominant religion, gender or race, c) physically stronger, d) elected to decorate some office etc.

This is an intangible, but very important human asset. So many people live in countries where they would like to walk free and criticize what they do not like, but must cast down their eyes in fear of every uniform. The feeling of liberation when such a regime falls down is indescribable.

I saw the Czechoslovak Velvet Revolution unfolding. It wasn't just a technical adjustment; for the first time in years people could (verbally or literally) spit on their former tyrants and walk free.

[epgui]

I fully agree that the utilitarian dimension is probably not the full picture. I really just find it a useful (ha!) idea, and I hope it’s given someone some difficult questions to think about. shrug

[goblin89]

Free speech is never unconditional free speech. The reality is more along the lines “allowed speech = everything except set X” construct, where X tends to grow indefinitely as more and more unacceptable things come in focus.

As an example, in both Czech Republic and Slovakia denying Holocaust is a crime. I’m sure new examples will come in future, though I hope we will not have to endure another mass horror and/or loss of life for that.

So, how about as a thought experiment we invert the aforementioned construct “allowed = everything except set X” and think of it as “allowed = one giant set Y”. Looks like we believe we must allow only certain things for humanity to exist and progress—so what is the criteria shared by speech in set Y? Random idea; what if it has less to do with what is said but the intent of it? However, the intent can never be communicated perfectly or proven, so it doesn’t seem feasible to restrict based on it, and we have to resort to substance banning instead.

Another thought, if we eliminate all mental issues and insecurities that cause people to attack (and agitate others to join) a group or generally behave in a way that is detrimental to others for personal gain, would we still need to restrict freedom of speech? Or is that an unrealistic scenario generally?

[naasking]

> Imagine you have free speech. Yay! Now what? Why was this so important again?

It's important because it's a human right.

> Free speech is not an end goal. It's a tool that serves a purpose.

No, it's a human right. Thinking that "human rights" are tools to serve a purpose is authoritarian thinking, where we grant people fictitious "rights" only if they serve some greater social purpose, but if that social purpose is threatened by those rights, we reserve the right to oppress them.

That said, I agree that recognizing free speech is a right doesn't mean it must be unrestricted. Other rights exist too after all.

[thephyber]

"because it's a human right" isn't exactly a useful argument.

Someone decided to add it to the list of human rights. They did it because it is a useful tool (and likely because humans without it are somehow less than humans with it).

I don't think your answer is as useful as perhaps an explanation of why it is a human right.

[raxxorrax]

I disagree that it is a tool. A silenced individual becomes a slave at some point. Not the individual challenges government power, other state institutions do that, so there is no compromise needed at all. Many people believe those control mechanisms are failing as they get more and more politicized. It is normal by now that government breaks the law. It is not allowed to put people under surveillance. Yet it does constantly. People responsible for that should be in prison. For a very long time. The problem would be solved since the next one would think hard of repeating the mistake. Yet many states are dysfunctional here.

So people are wise to insist on their right to make live hard for government. Until it repents this will not change.

[logicchains]

>Is the goal to give all the power to the individual? No, that's not the goal. The goal is to have some sort of equilibrium between the powers of the government and the powers of individuals.

The government is "individuals"! Every bit of power you take from the individuals in society, you give to the individuals in government. And historically the vast majority of these people have been corrupt and self-serving, because such kinds of people are attracted to positions of power, and most voters can't tell the difference between a good person and a skilled liar. Government attracts narcissists, as it requires a certain kind of narcisissm to go about telling people that they should live their lives how you want, not how they want.

[epgui]

In the context of my post, the meaning of "government" is basically Hobbes' Leviathan, or a more modern version of it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leviathan_(Hobbes_book)#Part_I...

[colordrops]

Free speech by our definition in the US is a sacred and mostly irreducible "holy" thing, as being the very first amendment of the constitution. There is no true democracy without free speech. Free speech is a fundamental atom of a healthy and fair democracy. There is almost never a case where restriction of speech isn't abused to give one individual or group political advantage over another.

[jrimbault]

> very first amendment

So, it's not, it's just the first change to an already existing document. The first article of your constitution describes the legislatives institutions. I (vaguely) know that, I'm not even American.

[amendenment]

It is precisely because it is the first amendment in the bill of rights, that demonstrates how highly the value is held. Any other "change" could have been first, but freedom of speech was chosen. The founders were not going to otherwise ratify the constitution without the bill of rights. I find it a bit pointless to say you are not American and vaguely know something in order to demonstrate that you understand the constitution better despite not being so, if you vaguely don't know that the constitution was not ratified without the bill of rights.

[thephyber]

Both you and the parent comment are correct.

Some states (Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Georgia, and Connecticut) ratified the Constitution before the Bill of Rights was formally drafted[1] and initially without requiring the Bill of Rights. The Massachusetts Compromise was an agreement that the Bill of Rights would be packaged with the new Constitution (with the BoR being active at ratification, before the Constitution) and was required before some of the remaining states would ratify the Constitution.

It's worth pointing out that the Bill of Rights was ratified 2.0 years after the first elections for national office and 1.5 years after the constitution was finally ratified. [1]

[1] https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/blog...

[epgui]

It is not atomic and irreducible, even in the United States. How could it be atomic and irreducible if there were exceptions to it? What justifies the exceptions? [1] Please don't be afraid to dig just a little bit deeper. I promise you that your respect for free speech will not be diminished: you'll just be a little bit less wrong in your logic.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...

[tempestn]

I agree with you, but to me this comment came across as a bit patronizing.

[epgui]

Apologies— not the intention, sincerely!

[tempestn]

Ha, happens to us all! Ironically my reply attracted downvotes, as it appears some felt the same way about my tone policing.

[epgui]

Here's an upvote for good-faith feedback! :)

[UncleMeat]

There are numerous legal restrictions on speech, including against false advertising and slander. Further, free speech has not been considered "holy" in private spaces for the history of the US. This modern discussion of social media and moderation is completely novel and cannot draw from past feelings on free speech as a principle.

[thephyber]

Yes. I feel like too many people are making the argument that social media spaces are the "town square" (legal concept) despite the fact that it has never been established. It's much closer to individuals sending in their opinions to a newspaper in hops of being printed in the OpEd section.

[cjfd]

Actually, free speech is an end goal. It is a human right. As such only grave reasons are valid to infringe upon it.

[epgui]

So if I ask you "why do we have or need human rights", would you say "there is no reason, the analysis stops there"?

[perryizgr8]

I saw a video in which Richard Feynman was asked to explain why magnets repel. He went on a long tirade but finally the answer was "magnets repel, because they do". Asking for a deeper explanation does not make sense unless you want to study theoretical physics for the rest of your life.

I feel this question about human rights falls into a similar category. They are required. If you want to go deeper into the reasons, you need to spend a lifetime studying philosophy and ethics and whatnot.

[thephyber]

"Because they do" is really vague, but a more useful way of saying the same thing is "repulsion is an observed property of some physical objects due to the force of magnetism" is a better answer. Feynman was creative and coy with some of his answers. That doesn't mean we all have to be.

The "Human Rights" discussion is different from a law of physics. It is a human-curated list of rights and they all have restrictions and exclusions, which is core to the "censorship by private companies on their properties" discussion.

It's helpful to discussions of "Human Rights" or "Natural Rights" to point to a written document that disambigautes the terms and enumerates the specific rights, so we know we are discussing the same thing.

The UN Declaration of Human Rights Article 19 says

> Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.[1]

[1] https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-huma...

[SketchySeaBeast]

> They are required.

Why are they required and what are they required for? Countries exist that don't have the exact same human rights, so clearly those rights don't need to exist for a nation or an individual to successfully exist.

[tekknik]

Did you not read the post? The answer as to why is a very deep discussion. Sure North Korea exists, do you want to live there? Maybe start with personal feelings?

[thephyber]

"The Flying Spaghetti Monster exists and is the only true god. The evidence exists but you have to already be an expert to understand it and it would take too long to explain it to you." This a tactic to shut down the discussion, not advance it.

Any time someone invokes "human rights" or "natural rights", it's worth at least referencing a common basis of facts written somewhere. Without this, such discussion is likely to follow two diverging paths and the people discussing it likely aren't talking about the same concepts. The relevant Human Rights document is usually the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights[1] and Free Speech/Expression is Article 19.

Some people sat down and decided the list of things that are "human rights". Lots of other people object to some of the items on that list, so it's not exactly infallible.

North Korea is a good example of a place with the lack of 1A protected speech from government interference, but it also has lots of other "human rights" violations, so you aren't really clarifying the problem with free speech by using it as an example. North Korea frequently violates most of the 30 UN declared human rights articles, so the connotation of using that country as an example leads to conflation of other issues.

Everything that creates or improves "personal feelings" isn't a human right, so that doesn't help the discussion much either.

[1] https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-huma...

[cjfd]

After that one gets into philosophical ethics rather quickly. In practice people not having human rights degrades into much suffering quickly. You said something not-so-nice about the government? Now we throw you in jail! So, why is that wrong? I am sure one can talk pretty endlessly in a philosophy course but in practice there does not seem to be much point. Also, we should keep history in mind. In fact, there is reason for severe trauma surrounding this area. Horrible events in history like nazism and communism, both with a body count in the 100 millions are a reason to hold some principles sacred to the point of refusing to discuss them.

[Pyramus]

Let me ask the question differently: Who would protect human rights?

Extrapolating from your examples it seems that only democracies (and the hypothetical benevolent dictator) grant individuals human rights. The question is: What comes first, democracy or human rights?

[cjfd]

Human rights are a precondition to democracy. The key idea is that in a democracy people can get laws changed if they can get enough others behind the idea. To do this one needs, at the very least, to tell other people about this idea that one has about this law that needs to be changed. If such speech is prohibited then democracy stops at square one. Your hypothetical benevolent dictator already points in this direction. A benevolent dictator could in principle respect all human rights but he would still write all laws so it would not be a democracy. It could even be allowed to say that the dictator situation sucks but it would just be impossible to change. So human rights precede democracy logically speaking, but perhaps not practically speaking.

[epgui]

I may not have all the answers, but personally, I think the question is rather important. I am really uncomfortable with the idea of certain things being sacred for no reason. Sometimes I get the impression that a lot of people are fighting for the right things, but by accident. My worry is that I don’t know what then prevents people from fighting for the wrong things by similar accident (eg.: nazism).

[cjfd]

Another thing one might ask is what is the goal of having a society in the first place or what should be the goal of having a society. I would say that providing its members with their human rights is pretty high up there as the goal. But maybe we can do a bit better. What about every person being able to strive for what they themselves consider valuable? I think that as such already presupposes human rights. Another thing to think about in this context is economic prosperity. When talking about nazism, I don't think you can see this as separate from the economic situation at the time it came up. If there is enough economic hardship people will follow the great leader who promises better and they will be vulnerable to the suggestion that some outgroup or etnicity is harming them.

[jimkleiber]

I really appreciated reading your post. So much of what I read online and then come to even believe myself pushes me towards one extreme or the other. I almost argue I need to do A or B. Again and again, something nudges me back to realizing it's a balance, an oscillation between the two sides, never fully settled, always with a little bounce and overshooting.

Reading your post helped me feel calm and at ease, nudging me back towards this realization. So thank you.

[loughnane]

I rank free speech very highly, certainly more than just a tool. My reasoning is this:

1. Some things are good in themselves, some for the sake of other things, some both.

2. Thus there must be an ultimate good that is good only in itself

3. “Happiness” seems to be to be that ultimate good.

4. “What is happiness” takes more than a sentence, but my money is that it’s closely related to things that are unique to humans.

5. That rules out much, but “reasoning”, particularly to the degree that we do it, is clearly unique.

6. I therefore identify the ability to reason as a core aspect of the happiness.

7. Given that we are naturally social creatures, it’s a short step to say that communicating our reasoning to others is a necessary consequence of the reasoning itself.

The result is that I see free speech as one of the top goods in a society. One in the neighborhood of the ultimate good and so indispensable in living a complete life.

To enshrine it in law for everyone rather than let individual power dictate who gets de facto FOS is to state that everyone deserves a full human life.

It’s not a mere tool or means to some other minor end.

[Sykander]

> 1. Some things are good in themselves, some for the sake of other things, some both.

Some people may agree or disagree with this sentiment, that an action can be inherently right or wrong. Afterall, context makes all the difference.

> 3 “Happiness” seems to be to be that ultimate good.

Unfortunately, we know that this isn't the case. Even is an absolute morality exists (meaning that a thing could inherently right without relying on some other authority), we know that happiness is not it's ideal, because then Utilitarianism would be fundamentally right in all scenarios, and it just isn't.

Furthermore, if we characterise happiness as an absolute goal, then why not just hook your brain directly up to a Seratonin IV for the rest of your life?

=====

Free Speech is important because just having someone tell you something is true isn't enough. There needs to ALWAYS be an open forum for disagreement, of anything. Even if you think something is right, it shouldn't be free from criticism.

If an idea isn't strong enough to stand in a free speech debate then it isn't worth holding onto.

[epgui]

Why do you think something serving as a tool, or having a utility, makes something less important?

You could see lungs as a tool to breathe, it doesn’t mean they aren’t essential.

[jlokier]

(For context, I'm not from the US and I'm not coming from a background of belief in the US system particularly.)

> Free speech is not an end goal. It's a tool that serves a purpose.

You seem to hold that view that each legal right granted to people is a tool for a purpose. But some things are held, by some, to be worthwhile for their own sake. They are regarded as intrinsically worthwhile.

Consider:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed [...]"

That famous text talks about noble ideas such as life, freedom and justice as intrinsically worthwhile. They are not being granted as tools to provide some other social utility. They are the goals themselves.

It doesn't say life is protected because it makes society better, or that freedom is granted because it makes society more efficient or something.

It's the other way around. Within that framework for thinking about values, society and government are the tools; and life, freedom and happiness are the worthy goals.

Is it such a stretch to consider that free speech is part of personal freedom itself, therefore free speech is an intrinsically worthwhile goal to protect in and of itself?

If you do believe free speech is intrinsically worth protecting as part of life, freedom and happiness, you will surely butt up against the hard reality that it causes injustice and misery in some contexts by its effects. Speech has effects which deprive other people of these same intrinsically worthwhile things, including depriving other people of meaningful free speech. Ethical dilemmas do exist around free speech. Nonetheless, if you believe that it's intrinsically worthwhile because freedom is, you will surely make every effort to resolve ethical dilemmas in a way that keeps free speech as an elevated, worthwhile goal in and of itself, without it needing to be justified as a tool for any other purpose.

[bondarchuk]

Free speech is a tool that serves a purpose. The purpose is a stable society. To have a stable society requires censorship. Very clever lmao.

[epgui]

That's... Not at all what I'm saying.

[bondarchuk]

Where did I go wrong in my analysis?

You say free speech is a tool that serves a purpose. Then you imply that the purpose of the tool is to push the balance of power toward the individual. The goal in pushing the balance of power to the individual is to have an equilibrium between the individuals' and the government's power. This equilibrium is characterized by an increase in stability. It seems fair to summarize this as "free speech is a tool that serves the purpose of increasing stability".

You conclude: "It's possible for something in a given situation to be more important than free speech." I think it's implied here that this "something" is (an increase in) stability. If stability is more important than free speech, it implies free speech should be restricted in order to achieve stability. In other words, censorship should be applied in order to achieve more stability.

[Pyramus]

You are making a false equivalence here: Restriction of free speech != censorship.

Every single Western democracy on this planet restricts free speech in exactly the way parent described - as a trade-off between the rights of the individuals and the rights of the souvereign [1]. Even the US has a long list of restrictions to free speech.

The question is not whether to restrict free speech, the question is where to draw the line.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_by_country

[giantrobot]

> Restriction of free speech != censorship.

You're making a false assertion that attaching consequences to some speech is censorship. No one can prevent you from yelling "fire!" in a crowded theater. There are however post hoc consequences for doing so falsely, as doing so is very dangerous to others.

Even then you have the opportunity to defend yourself in a court of law. You may have been thought there was a fire in the theater but simply been mistaken. That's why laws include clauses of intent.

Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences of that speech.

[bondarchuk]

>"Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information."[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship

[Pyramus]

That is exactly my point - where do we, as a society, draw the line.

suppression of speech != restriction of free speech

It is a very very delicate and complicated balance - what I am objecting to is to ignore that this balance exists.

If you disagree with the word "restriction", let me rephrase as "free speech has limits" or "free speech is not the end goal".

"In the United States, freedom of speech and expression is restricted by time, place and manner"

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_in_the_Unite...

[epgui]

I would actually agree with this— it’s how I personally use the word, but in as abstract as sense as possible.

For eg.: copyright is a form of censorship.

[epgui]

The “something” in question was not referring to the increase in stability, though it might lead to it. Also, and most crucially, I did not say, or intend to suggest, that “censorship improves stability”.

Free speech and stability are not in competition with each other. They’re different categories of things.

Please help me out a little and try really hard to not interpret what I said in the worst possible way.

[bondarchuk]

Well, you said one of the things that could be more important than free speech is stability. You did not directly say "censorship improves stability", but if you say that stability is one of the things that can be more important than free speech, it strongly implies free speech can sometimes be restricted (i.e. censorship) to reach the goal of stability.

I don't feel like I'm interpreting your posts in a particularly negative way. I'm just trying to be explicit about the kind of tradeoff you're proposing. If you find yourself flipping your stance once the flowery rhetoric is translated into basic, actionable language, someone is getting fooled and it's not me.

[epgui]

That is not what I said at all. I said that stability could be seen as one of the main reasons _why_ free speech is important/useful.