[hackerlight]

> It's not, and I will tell you why: in my opinion, an okayish criterion that's applied consistently is better than a good criterion that's applied inconsistently. The best compromise is the one where all the parties are left equally dissatisfied. And why is that?

A corollary of this opinion is that a good criterion that's applied with 99.99999999% accuracy is worse than a mediocre criterion that's applied with 100% accuracy. That is an absurdity which comes from forcing the real world to fit into rigid binary categories.

> It's because it's easier to convince everyone that one is being fair than that one is taking the optimal course of action.

Perceptions of fairness isn't my primary objective. My primary objective is to make life better for myself and the people I care about. Yes, that's not an objective ideal, morality isn't objective, we agree on that.

> Would I take any steps at all to prevent that, beyond possibly arguing against such ideas? No.

> I'm a moral nihilist, yes.

> [don't] unilaterally ascribe beliefs to me

I withdraw the moral nihilist comment, because I've realized you can't be that, given that you're prescriptively arguing for no moderation as being superior to moderation. That means there is some moral system there that you're not disclosing, since without some moral assumptions you would not be able to argue for one possibility being superior to another. Regarding your political beliefs, I was presuming more than assuming them. If you're not arguing from some tribal culture war motivation, then I find your opinions to be bizarre and can't understand the system of principles or axioms that they come from.

[fluoridation]

>That is an absurdity

That's not an absurdity. There's no contradiction in those statements. You simply disagree because you have different priorities from me.

>I withdraw the moral nihilist comment, because I've realized you can't be that, given that you're prescriptively arguing for no moderation as being superior to moderation. That means there is some moral system there that you're not disclosing

Like I said, it depends on the interpretation of the word. If you're using the word "morals" to refer to a system of values (i.e. a set of relative importances that are assigned to things) that inform people's decisions, then yes, I believe in those, obviously.

>If you're not arguing from some tribal culture war motivation, then I find your opinions to be bizarre and can't understand the system of principles or axioms that they come from.

What do you find bizarre about the following?

* In any system involving multiple people, fairness is of utmost importance to maintain stability and cohesion. Unfair treatment causes conflict and divisions.

* No idea should be silenced. The acceptance that some ideas should be silenced and others not inevitably leads to conflict regarding the rationale itself and whether it's applied fairly, and may lead to a slippery slope. On the other hand, if absolute free speech is in effect no one can legitimately complain that they're being treated unfairly.

There are also more practical reasons to oppose censorship in all its forms, such as the Streisand effect.

[hackerlight]

It's bizarre because nobody believes that when it comes to anything else.

Take any crime, such as murder. It is impossible to ban and punish murder perfectly fairly. Some inconsistencies and unfairness is guaranteed. That doesn't mean we should stop enforcing all criminal sentencing just because it's not perfectly fair.

You bring up the social consequences of perceived unfairness and the Streisand effect. These are social psychology arguments which you've previously said you're not looking at. Well it's good that you're taking social psychology seriously because that's the focal point of this, and I refer back to the previous things I've said on that.

[fluoridation]

>It is impossible to ban and punish murder perfectly fairly.

It's not. What's impossible is to determine with 100% certainty who committed a murder. But if you start from the assumption that you correctly know who committed a murder, you can administer a fair sentence quite easily. For example, you could punish all murders equally regardless of circumstances, but it's possible even if different sentences may be applied.

Censorship is completely different.

First, it's not completely obvious that the mere utterance of an idea is something that should be prevented or punished.

Second, the unfairness of censorship comes from the fact that the utterance of only some ideas is prohibited. Well, why those and not others? That is to say, given that ideas don't arise in a vacuum, but are the products of minds, why are some people being punished by being prevented from expressing themselves just for their ideas while others aren't? It's not like (extrajudicially) murdering some people is legal and murdering others isn't.

Third, murder (and, to a lesser extent, crime in general) is an exceptional occurrence. It's not something that's happening trillions of time per day. For something that happens so frequently, it's inevitable that policing will be inconsistent to the point that one violation will be punished and another not, even though they're exactly equivalent.

>These are social psychology arguments

These are common sense arguments. The idea that fairness is important is as old as trying to decide what to have for lunch.

[hackerlight]

> But if you start from the assumption that you correctly know who committed a murder, you can administer a fair sentence quite easily.

This is again you trying to fit reality into neat, hard, rigid categories. You think murder sentencing can be "fair" and "consistent", but censorship can only be "unfair" and "inconsistent". Binaries that only exist in your imagination and don't exist in the real world. Categorical thinking is bad, and I suggest you read my post on this kind of thinking: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32674580

Murders, just like any other crime or just like spoken words, aren't homogeneous. Premeditated murder and torture is different to a spontaneous unplanned murder. Judges and juries are subjective, and will come to different sentences for the same crime. Juries are imperfect, and will convict some innocent people or let some guilty people off by sheer accident. There is lots of unfairness here. And it's necessary unfairness, because we accept that systems can be desirable even if they aren't perfectly fair.

> First, it's not completely obvious that the mere utterance of an idea is something that should be prevented or punished.

> Well, why those and not others?

We've already been over this. I am not a moral relativist or moral nihilist. I will advocate to ban strings of words that have a non-trivial probability of causing stochastic terrorism or genocide, by the same logic that we choose to ban direct calls to violence. You are not a moral nihilist either, because you presumably are happy that theft is illegal, despite the fact that your opinion on that is purely subjective, as are all political and moral opinions.

> Third, murder (and, to a lesser extent, crime in general) is an exceptional occurrence. It's not something that's happening trillions of time per day.

This isn't relevant. Drink driving and petty theft happens many times a day but it's a crime for a good reason. And if it weren't a crime, it may happen much more often.

[fluoridation]

>You think murder sentencing can be "fair" and "consistent", but censorship can only be "unfair" and "inconsistent".

I think that murder sentencing can be fair. It's not, but murder is not something that should go unpunished either way.

I think censorship is not and has never been fair. Not only that, historically the point has been the opposite: to oppress. I think "well-intentioned censorship" like you propose is so easy to pervert that it's worse than nothing.

>We've already been over this.

And we're going over it again because the first time around you apparently found my viewpoint incomprehensible.

>I am not a moral relativist or moral nihilist. I will advocate to ban strings of words that have a non-trivial probability of causing stochastic terrorism or genocide

But you're not alone in the world. While you're happy to have those strings banned and none others, other people will want to use the same systems that were put in place in order to ban strings, to ban some strings that you may not care about one way or another, and others that you think should not be banned.

>by the same logic that we choose to ban direct calls to violence

I don't think calls to commit crime need to be banned. I don't think shouting fire in a crowded theater need to be banned. It's one each person to act accordingly in each situation, and not be moved to action by the first idiot who says something stupid. If the justification for censorship of ideas is censorship of calls to violence, I'm fine with having none.

But see what I mean? If I tell you "I'm not opposed to banning calls to violence" I'm opening the door for you to come back with "well, then what about these other strings that have similar effects?" Do you not see how the same can be done to you?

>This isn't relevant.

It is relevant. Unlike crime, which most people at most rarely feel like committing, almost everyone has an opinion that someone else would find objectionable and would rather they didn't voice.