[mrguyorama]

> But one should realize that thorny words are precisely what replaces physical violence.

No this is bullshit. The Nazis didn't kill the jews because they couldn't say mean things about them. The Nazis didn't purposely target trans people and gay people and mentally challenged people and political opponents because they couldn't slag them publicly.

Germany did not become Nazis because of any lack of free speech. People were talking about how horrifying the Nazis were right up until they were put in camps.

Christ.

The Civil War didn't happen because people weren't able to say black people are lesser (which they were always able to say and still are)

This take is detached from history.

How much violence did Native Americans avoid by getting to say how awful they were being treated? They were never muzzled, so why did they still end up basically ethnically cleansed?

[txrx0000]

These are examples of minorities being oppressed through physical violence. Minorities are still oppressed in democratic societies today because a democratic society by definition prioritizes the majority's interests.

The difference is oppression used to be physical and involved a lot of killing, now it is done through non-violent means through words. That's what I meant by words replacing violence.

[mrguyorama]

No, that oppression definitely involved plenty of words before. The natives were "savages" and "in the way" and "weren't using the land" we said.

Southern preachers insisted that being enslaved was the black man's rightful place, as god intended, because they were naturally less intelligent and "savage" and needed good guidance from the white man.

I'm tired, after hundreds of years, of people still insisting "no no no, just a little more information freedom and humans will magically fix all their natural biases and magically stop acting like humans and magically stop believing what is comfortable instead of what is provably correct"

It's absolutely good to be much closer to the "Freer" side of that spectrum than the "government enforced muzzle" side, but I'm so tired of people insisting that we can't possibly wiggle around a little bit on the spectrum to find maybe a better place.

Oppression does not come from what laws you have. Oppression comes from how power works. It doesn't matter what laws you have on the books if you put people in charge who do not give a shit about them. It doesn't matter if you have the first amendment if you elect enough people to just disregard it and even change it if you want.

Rules aren't real. Rules don't matter unless you can enforce them. If you allow oppressive people into power, it doesn't matter how many times you write "don't oppress people"

What oppression has free speech demonstrably stopped?

[txrx0000]

> I'm tired, after hundreds of years, of people still insisting "no no no, just a little more information freedom and humans will magically fix all their natural biases and magically stop acting like humans and magically stop believing what is comfortable instead of what is provably correct"

But we are fixing our natural biases over time to get to the technological civilization we have today. Our beliefs align better with reality today than 500 years ago. That's why we can build computers which we're using to talk right now, but couldn't 500 years ago. Everybody is better off compared to 500 years ago. Information sharing accelerates this process.

> What oppression has free speech demonstrably stopped?

Free speech doesn't stop oppression, it replaces violence. Oppression is in human nature, or rather, in nature in general. When two individuals that share a local region of reality have misaligned wishes, they interfere with eachother. But how they interfere matters. Free speech changes the method of interaction, but not the essence of competition.

Two perfectly rational people can agree on a shared model of reality yet not agree on what actions to take next. People, although more similar than different, have different preferences. A modern democratic society simply places the majority's wishes first and oppresses minorities non-violently. It allows open negotiation to balance these wishes without resorting to violence.

Attacking one of the essential pillars of this society doesn't stop oppression, it just risks bringing back a worse form of it.