[coldpie]

Sure. Speech can, itself, restrict speech. "I have a gun in my pocket and I will shoot anyone who disagrees with me." It's just speech, but it restricts others' willingness to speak. If you allow all speech, some speakers will use that tool to restrict others' speech, which means not all speech is actually allowed. "Free speech" is a paradox.

[bheadmaster]

> It's just speech

It's not just speech - it's speech with an intention to do harm. That's like saying going into a bank and saying "my partner there has a gun and he will start shooting unless you give me money" is also abusing free speech - it's not about speech, it's about actions in the real world.

> If you allow all speech, some speakers will use that tool to restrict others' speech, which means not all speech is actually allowed

Nobody uses speech on its own to restrict others' speech.

> "Free speech" is a paradox.

I'm not convinced, see above explanations.

[coldpie]

Right, so now we've moved from "free speech" to "free speech unless it has an intention to do harm" which means you agree that some speech ought to be restricted. Suddenly things get really complicated (how do you define "harm" and "intention" and even "has"?), and now you're on the same page as the rest of us who understand that "free speech" is a paradox.

[bheadmaster]

> Right, so now we've moved from "free speech" to "free speech unless it has an intention to do harm"

We haven't moved anywhere, because it's not speech that's illegal, it's the intention to do harm. You could perfectly well communicate your intentions to do harm with no speech at all, e.g. by pointing a gun to a bank teller without saying a word. If you use speech to offer to sell drugs to somebody, and a cop arrests you for it, that's not an issue of free speech, that's an issue of drug dealing.

The fact that you aren't allowed to commit crimes by using your speech doesn't make free speech itself a paradox - otherwise any use of the word "free" in the context of humans in society might as well be paradoxical. "We're not free to commit a murder, therefore individual freedom is a paradox" - that'd be quite a naive take on the matter.

[coldpie]

You're losing track of the conversation. I'm not talking about laws or society or legality. I'm explaining how one person can use their speech to cause another person to choose not to speak, in other words, suppress that second person's speech. This is why it's a paradox: enabling free speech can itself suppress speech.

[bheadmaster]

I'm not losing track of the conversation - free speech is a legal concept, and you haven't written that you're talking about the ideal of free speech. Please do not mistake your inability to express yourself with my ability to follow a conversation.

In case of free speech as an ideal, it's still a bullshit argument. You cannot suppress speech with speech alone. Go on any anonymous internet forum and try to suppress someone's speech by e.g. threatening to doxx/harm them - you will be laughed at, because on the internet there is no real threat of harm. It's always the threat of harm that actually suppresses speech, not speech itself.

That fact that you use speech to deliver the threat doesn't in itself create a paradox.

In context of freedom of movement, that argument would be akin to "free movement is a paradox because you can suppress someone's movement by holding them down". Yes, you use free movement to walk up to a person, but it's not your movement that holds them down.

[drcongo]

Free speech is not a legal concept. The most cited example of speech being used to harm others is shouting "Fire" in crowded theatre and people dying in the stampede to leave. There is no legal protection for doing so. Speech has consequences, sometimes benign, sometimes not.

[drcongo]

Perfect, thanks.