[kelseyfrog]

I think this makes sense if we're ok with the number of perpetrators going up due to being convinced it's ok to perpetrate.

> Attempting to control second-order factors that may influence behaviour is a very short road to tyranny. How do we decide which factors to control for? Who gets to make this decision? How do we know in retrospect that such a decision was mistaken? The only justice lies in conviction beyond a reasonable doubt by a jury of one's peers.

It is very hard to read this as not sealioning. Is there a way you could rephrase it so that it doesn't come across that way?

[thegrimmest]

> the number of perpetrators going up due to being convinced it's ok to perpetrate

It's an inevitable consequence of power (read: to do harm) being distributed rather than concentrated. With distributed power you're at the mercy of group dynamics and trends. However the risks of concentrated power have borne out to be much more severe.

> rephrase it so that it doesn't come across [as sealioning]

I'm genuinely mystified as to what distinguishes "well-intentioned" use of authority to control people from what we see as obviously tyrannical. What principle would you use to distinguish between the kind of control over speech exercised by the UK and what is commonplace in China? Or are you willing to concede that these are different degrees of the same thing? I'm simply arguing that this "thing" (the use of authority to limit speech) should be avoided at all costs in a free society.

[kelseyfrog]

That would make sense if we were talking about centralized vs decentralized power to do harm, but we're not having that conversation. We're having a conversation about the freedom of speech that has the power to convince people to do harm in ways that aren't direct calls to violence. Please stay on topic, or find someone else to engage with.

Again, please refrain from sealioning. Simply rephrasing your arguments in ways that don't appear indistinguishable from it. If you keep doing it, I will have to assume you're doing it on purpose an in bad faith. It's not a good debate tactic in a conversation about "rational debate" and its effects on violence. Sealioning is exactly one of the tactics used in the topic we're discussing. You must appreciate the irony.

[thegrimmest]

To have a conversation about freedom of speech you have to have a conversation about "freedom", it's meaning, and it's value. Freedom of speech does indeed have the power to convince people to do harm. However the only alternative to "freedom of speech" are constraints on speech enforced by authority. In order to oppose freedom of speech you have to support the use of authority to constrain speech. You therefore must argue that such a use of authority does less harm than the freedom it is curtailing (and as a policy is resistant to corruption).

In addition to all of this, we have to agree that "reduction of harm" is a valid guiding principle to hold above all others. This is fundamentally consequentialist (and valid as such). My thesis though is that "freedom" itself has deontological value, even if it causes harm. Deontologists and consequentialists have a notoriously hard time seeing eye to eye.

I'm not at all trying to derail the conversation, but it just doesn't seem all that clear-cut to me.

[kelseyfrog]

You do know what sealioning is, right? It's a denial of service attack on the debate format. I really wish you could engage in a way that doesn't evoke this style. You seem smart, why not try?

[thegrimmest]

Asking one question, which can be phrased as "what test would you propose to determine whether speech was responsible for violence?" is hardly sealioning.

[kelseyfrog]

It's weird how sealioning doesn't feel like it to the person who does it. I don't doubt you have no intention of doing it, but it always has the guise of "reasoned debates" and the strategy of pestering the other person with questions until they give up.

I'm so sorry that you came up with the idea that I need to have a test and then continue to ask me what it would be. I hope you can simply lay this to rest. The longer you insist that you're asking questions under the pretense of rational debate, the more and more it looks like it's definitionally sealioning.