[woolion]

We have reached a point where it has been a mainstream position to view the idea of defending free speech as disagreeable, or even deeply offensive. This statement is so weak that it is necessary to consider this climate to even understand how this can be published as a statement.

After explicitly saying that illegal speech is not free speech, it lists 6 exceptions for things that are not free speech either, including speech "that is otherwise directly incompatible with the functioning of the Institute". Which is even written twice, while being clearly a catch-all. And it mentions "In addition, MIT may reasonably regulate the time, place, and manner of expression to ensure that it does not disrupt the ordinary activities of the Institute." Why not have "free speech safe spaces", which would be small individual-sized sound-proof rooms where you are allowed to say what you think? If you also pad the walls, you could find many uses for these rooms.

With principles so weakly held, why have principles at all?

[kingcharles]

Having spent the last 8 years suing governmental entities, I promise you that this bullshit:

>After explicitly saying that illegal speech is not free speech, it lists 6 exceptions for things that are not free speech either, including speech "that is otherwise directly incompatible with the functioning of the Institute"

Is their future get-out clause for anything and everything.

These types of bullshit clauses are everywhere in the law.

[gpm]

Ask yourself "what part of this allows them to prevent rock concerts during exams in the exam halls", it's only the parts that you seem to wish they would remove. I think we can both agree, that MIT does need the power to prevent rock concerts during exams in the exam halls.

[andrew_]

Either there's some obscure news I'm not up to speed on, or this is one of the most bananas straw men I've run across.

[gpm]

The exact scenario was inspired by a "prank" the engineers pull off on new students at the university I went to every year (more along the lines of a spontaneous musical than a rock concert, but same effect). The broader point was that there's tons of "expression" that you need time/place/manner restrictions against for completely content legitimate, the exact example wasn't important.

It's not a straw man at all... a straw man argument is arguing against something that someone else didn't said, I'm directly arguing that the terms the person I responded to suggested aren't needed, are in fact needed. It is sort of an argumentum ad absurdum, but that's a valid form of argument, and the absurdness of the example isn't necessary so it's only sort of one.

If you want less absurd examples, they need to be able to regulate the expression of telling people answers during tests (time/place), the expression of making loud noises all night in dorm rooms (place/manner), the "expression" of plagarizing someone else's paper and calling it your own (directly incompatible with...), etc.

Edit: Found a video for y'all: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lyHQLyZUuM

[Throwawayaerlei]

MIT's equivalent was and may still be "freshman shower night," where students would be forcibly abducted from their dorm rooms and thrown into a running shower the night before the first mid-term exams were held for core math and physics courses.

[phone[phone]]

That sounds absolutely batshit - "don’t you dare say any wrongthink, but battery is a-okay if it’s a time honored tradition".

Saying "fuck the president" is a time honored tradition that doesn’t batter anybody, but I doubt that will be protected.

[raxxorrax]

It is a strawman. A rock concert is not expressing an idea, on the contrary it limits the ability for others to express themselves.

[908B64B197]

> I think we can both agree, that MIT does need the power to prevent rock concerts during exams in the exam halls.

Sure, maybe at party schools.

The culture around MIT might surprise you. They take exams and learning quite seriously.

[908B64B197]

> while being clearly a catch-all.

That's the whole point. This is straight from the Ethics playbook. It's a set of vague guidelines that wouldn't pass the stricter bar of being tested in court (like the first amendment has). It's basically anyone with a sliver of power playing judge and legislator. The catch-all clause simply makes it possible for the ethics mob to shut every form of speech they don't deem acceptable (again, this wouldn't stand in a real court of law).

Keep in mind the point of ethics is to shame people or practices you don't like via some kind of cancel culture of peer pressure. You'll also see the same thing with Codes of Conducts that basically allow anyone to exclude anyone for vague or no reason at all.

[BeFlatXIII]

Catch-alls are necessary so that clever rules lawyers can get dunked on. Without them, someone will find a loophole and then proceed to abuse it to be disruptive.

[qsort]

There's always the tennis court.

[ur-whale]

> We have reached a point where it has been a mainstream position to view the idea of defending free speech as disagreeable, or even deeply offensive.

I disagree.

There is a very vocal, very small minority that's ruining it for everyone else.

Certainly not mainstream.

[tharne]

> There is a very vocal, very small minority that's ruining it for everyone else.

You're both right. Unfortunately, that very small minority is culturally dominant, so it is the case that:

1) >> We have reached a point where it has been a mainstream position to view the idea of defending free speech as disagreeable, or even deeply offensive. And;

2) > There is a very vocal, very small minority that's ruining it for everyone else.

In the same way a relatively small but well-organized group like the Taliban can control an entire country despite lacking enthusiastic support from the majority of the population, a small but well-organized subculture can dominate and dictate what is/is not acceptable in mainstream American culture.

For a better and more nuanced explanation, see "The Minority Rule" by Nassim Taleb. https://nassimtaleb.org/2016/08/intolerant-wins-dictatorship...

[snicker7]

By "very small minority", do you mean "one of the two only viable political parties in the United States"?

[commandlinefan]

Well, it seems that the very vocal, very small minority are the gatekeepers to what can be widely disseminated enough to become mainstream.

[xhkkffbf]

Yes, that's my experience. Everyone in my circles is perfectly happy with the idea that everyone entitled to have opinions and express them politely. It's only a radical few that are pushing the cancel culture hard.

[syshum]

I have to ask, which side are you taking,

because I honestly do not know, and I dont think it is "small minority" on either side.

There are ALOT of people that oppose free speech as a concept, hiding behind statements like "hate speech is not free speech" or "words are violence"

So while think you are attempting to defend free speech, I can also see how your statement would be "free speech absolutist are ruining everything"

[62951413]

Did the West actually win the Cold War? The parallels with the Soviets are getting more real by the day. With those exceptions the commitments like that would be right at home in Putin's Russia and whatever is left of their universities.

[mmastrac]

There's no magic bullet for free speech thanks to the Paradox of Tolerance. Allowing all speech, completely unrestricted, is a recipe for creating a completely unworkable environment.

[ecshafer]

In the "Paradox of Tolerance" Popper argues that despite the apparent paradox, defending free speech and having a tolerant society is the only way to go. People use the paradox of tolerance argument often, but leave out the part where popper resolves the paradox.

[AlanYx]

Yes, Marcuse's 1965 essay "Repressive Tolerance" is actually closer to what most people understand Popper's work to be saying.

[hnaccy]

Where does he resolve the paradox?

He says you should claim the right to suppress the intolerant and that preaching intolerance is outside the law.

[AlanYx]

Popper essentially takes the same position as Thomas Jefferson. Popper says: "I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise." Emphasis on the unwise -- for some unknown reason, there's this idea floating around that Popper thought it was wise to suppress intolerant philosophies. That's Marcuse's position, not Popper's (and Marcuse also is candid that his own position may be incompatible with democracy).

What Popper does agree is that societies should retain the right to act if civil discourse fails, which is again basically Jefferson's position.

[AnimalMuppet]

More briefly: When the intolerant reach for a gun, the tolerant don't have to tolerate that. Not when the intolerant speak - when they proceed past speech into violence. Then the tolerant don't have to tolerate it (and, in fact, kind of have to not tolerate it.)

[syshum]

This is why you now how people claiming "Speech is violence" and even "Silence is Violence"

They want to expand the definition of violence just like they have many many many other terms

[somenameforme]

Here is the 'Paradox of Tolerance':

>Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.—In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise.

>But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols.

>We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.

The one thing one may claim is that it is not immediately clear is what he means by intolerance or intolerant groups, yet he leaves little ambiguity in the second section above.

[brigandish]

I'm going to assume that you've read the meme cartoon that goes around instead of actually reading Popper's actual words because that is not what Popper suggested at all.

It's only a couple of pages long, it's even free to read on archive.org.

[pessimizer]

This is never not been a mainstream position. I can't easily get news from the Chinese government or Iranian patriots, but the Falun Gong have three OTA TV stations in Chicago. The same people complaining about the woke mob are also fired up about "critical race theory."

If you care about people being fired for being canceled, work for labor rights. If you support at-will employment but also worry about people being fired for being canceled, work to make racists, sexists, and homophobes a protected employment class. If you've successfully passed special rights for racists, sexists, and homophobes, specifically protecting their employment, but you're still upset because people can still call you shitty, protest you and drown out your voice in public, and not invite you to their parties - add racists, sexists and homophobes to hate crime legislation, and start rounding up the people who are oppressing you by speaking.

[dogleash]

Labor rights are a patchwork. If you believe in them you should probably engage with strange bedfellows to accomplish the most feasible. Then, maybe when you get to the harder issues you might have shown more people why expanding labor rights is an attractive political goal.

Right now you're just coming across as someone who's going to be miffed to find out what's in California Labor Code § 1101.

[ComradePhil]

The whole idea of "free speech" is misleading and should be abolished. There is no such thing in practice. No government wants information that is damaging, whether the information is true or not, to be leaked out to the enemy, external or internal. Same applies to every organization. They will create whatever structures/laws to make sure that they limit this. They should be expected to.

There may be some value in telling people that they have free speech so as to identify people's intent and take them out if they speak against the establishment... but then the really smart ones (who are the actual threats to the establishment in question) will also most likely figure it out.

[AnimalMuppet]

See, that's exactly why we need a right to free speech. The government doesn't like it. The next government won't, either. So we need the principle that the government cannot stop speech, and we need people to rigorously police that right, because the government will always try to encroach on it.

[ComradePhil]

I don't think there is such a thing and keeping the illusion is also bad for everyone.