Free Speech and Creepy Liberalism

I don't think that you are arguing in good faith for people arguing in bad faith

there are very powerful counterarguments for why they don’t license racism and sexism and anarcho-capitalism and so on.

This gets us right back to the core problem of how few people create mental maps of remote reality that allow adequate complexity and do not immediately lapse into binary thinking. People seem able to develop complex thoughts in regard to facts they encounter frequently in real life, but the more remote the subject becomes from their immediate reality, the more simplified their ideas become and the fewer shades of gray are allowed, until it is all stark black & white thinking.

iow, powerful counterarguments don't avail against binary thinking.

I was curious and decided to come at this from complete ignorance

Bad faith (Latin: mala fides) is double mindedness or double heartedness in duplicity, fraud, or deception. It may involve intentional deceit of others, or self-deception.

I think there's a case for people thinking they're making good faith arguments but aren't, and I'm willing to extend an olive branch only so far tbh

imho false consciousness arguments are bad faith. the least amount of faith you can lend your interlocutor is that they can represent themselves in an discussion.

haha i mean it's one thing to accuse your intelocutor of having false consciousness it's another to posit its existence or its position in a chain of causality

but this doesn't work either way. even if the chain of causality is "bad faith put this idea into the world / guy picks up on bad faith idea in good faith" you don't gain anything from "it's poison at the root so don't touch it" bc it means you're leaving good faith ppl believing the bad faith idea with no context or pushback. and this is ignoring the fact that a lot of these "bad faith ideas" are true or at least true to some extent (which is why they require the mitigating contextual information).

honestly, you get to a point where some people don't care about causality or w/e and why don't people in 2018 just make better lives for themselves. it's not my problem

even if the chain of causality is "bad faith put this idea into the world / guy picks up on bad faith idea in good faith" you don't gain anything from "it's poison at the root so don't touch it" bc it means you're leaving good faith ppl believing the bad faith idea with no context or pushback. and this is ignoring the fact that a lot of these "bad faith ideas" are true or at least true to some extent (which is why they require the mitigating contextual information).

― Mordy, Friday, January 12, 2018 8:32 PM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

but again, you're talking about talking _to_ 'bad faith' people. i'm talking about talking _about_ them.

if i'm talking to somebody really committed to an incorrect idea then i go looking for a value we share, figure out why it matters to them, and then build on the shared value to a sense of communion at a final point

_arguing_ is so unpleasant

People arguing in bad faith see such statements as ends in themselves. These people are violent because... these people are violent. They see that as a conclusion, not a data point.

^ I think this is a good point

Like almost always when I've seen the FACT about homicide rates being higher among black men FACT it's been in internet postings that weren't looking for a reasoned response or discussion, by people who weren't really interested in facts, but liked the idea of rhetorically appending FACT after their statements

Obviously there's a kind of intellectual nobility to that work which take these FACTS and analyses them and digs deep into the context to get us readers of their thinkpiece or blog post a fuller, truer picture. Good on those who take up this work.

... but the difficulty of doing that work full-time, these days, is the difference between engaging constructively with opinions you don't agree with, as our better selves do in an idealised philosophical life, and engaging with an outpouring of sheer toxic sludge, as it often is in real life. We notice that, with the big contemporary right-wing positions - pro-Trump, pro-Brexit, things of that sort - very often, when you're out in the wild, and you meet someone who holds the position, you also meet someone who has a problem. Very often their position is really just an expression of their problem; making it a smoky, draining thing to engage with, and meanwhile, unless qualified, you'll struggle to help with their problem, and there it will sit, even if you 'win' about the position. People who have a problem are much easier to talk about than to. And sometimes it feels more useful, to talk about, rather than to them?

well put

Capitalist societies are better than communist ones.

I'd rather live in West Germany than East Germany, especially during the heydays of the Darmstadt School or krautrock, but, come on, this is not an objective statement of fact. It's hard to take Pinker's argument very seriously.

Fair cop
― The Bridge of Ban Louis J (silby)

jumbo shrimp

xp really? think it's pretty obvious when even china has moved to a market economy

"Better" is p obviously not an objective measurement of anything factual. Nor does Pinker support it with anything other than subjective preferences, which is probably why it is "unsayable" in academic discussions. A statement such as "capitalist societies have higher per capita GDPs on average than communist societies" would be a factual claim (assuming it's true, which I haven't actually checked but assume to be the case) and I really don't think that would be unsayable in academia.

This one could run and run but basically, saying 'X is better than Y' implies 'come on people, let's just forget about Y already! X is just better!' which is not a propitious start to a full and frank discussion of the merits and demerits of X

Maybe I'm splitting a hair but I think it's important for his argument to carry any weight that his examples not be strawmen. xp

sund4r otm.

Matthew Yglesias and Jonathan Chait are arguing on Twitter about students at Brown protesting Guy Benson's appearance.

(I didn't know Benson, a frequent FOX guest, is gay)

No matter how many times someone says it, this is not what the “right to free speech” is. https://t.co/AH1XxqwyWK

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) February 14, 2018

It comes down to three points:
- Is it worth protesting against speakers who make arguments that are not in good faith?
- Is your protest in good faith, according to the accepted evidence and what you view as reasonable?
- Do you malign people who doing the latter, against people who are doing the former, because you don't believe their premises?

Even if you think Benson is making arguments that you disagree with but are fine to make, why would you say that someone criticizing his arguments, in good faith, is against free speech? Chait is aligning himself with Benson implicitly by saying his arguments have merit, but people saying his arguments are malicious are inherently in the wrong. Protest doesn't need to be perfect, it needs only to criticize power.

Chait's a cop

Is that or is any of that a quote or is it all you

sadly the latter, sorry

the real me only wrote the last sentence

tbh feel free to delete all but the last bit, mods

Wait I'm confused

Is someone trying to arrest Guy Benson for his opinions and throw him in jail? Or are people just insisting that he ought not be invited to speak at a particular institution which they pay large amounts of money to, because they think that what he says is actively harmful? Cuz, only the first of those scenarios touches on "the right to free speech".

this guy is on to something

Brown University -- a private university, unbound by the First Amendment like, say, mine is -- hasn't yet rescinded the invitation either. It's 18 students and one Jonathan Chait causing the trouble.

tbh it's funnier if the speaker shows up and no one is there but it's hard to get that situation in play

http://jmrphy.net/blog/2018/02/16/who-is-afraid-of-free-speech/

That is interesting and I read the entire thing but could have guessed the outcome

this entire sham is a cottage industry at this point etc.

https://www.gq.com/story/free-speech-grifting

As Adam Serwer in The Atlantic and Jamelle Bouie in Slate have pointed out exhaustively, there are many more deeply disturbing threats to free speech, namely those enforced by the state. (Technically, First Amendment protections apply to guarding against the state imposing on the free speech of people, not the battleground of ideas at universities.) Examples include laws that ban positive portrayals of homosexuality in public schools, and police unions urging their members to retaliate against private citizens who have lodged complaints of misconduct. At Trump's inauguration last year, an anti-capitalist and anti-fascist march called J20 resulted in mass arrests, including of journalists, medics, and legal observers. Originally, 239 people were charged with felony inciting to riot, facing up to 60 years in prison. Houses were raided. The ACLU got involved. And not a peep in an entire year from any of the so-called free-speech warriors. Ditto this past week, when a Wisconsin school administrator was fired for allowing black students to hold a discussion about white privilege in a district that is 90 percent Caucasian. How peculiar.

...
Jordan Peterson, a psychology professor turned conservative provocateur, said he's figured out "how to monetize social justice warriors." Ben Shapiro, who rose to fame "owning" liberals on college campuses, sells "Leftist Tears" mugs and a book entitled How to Debate Leftists and Destroy Them. Andy Ngo, a conservative activist who followed Sommers around to her Portland engagements, asked for donations after he published a video of the Lewis & Clark episode, notably edited down to just the protesting rather than including Sommers's ideas. Sommers vouched for Ngo's plea for money, tweeting that "he works tirelessly promoting free expression in Portland area. Often for no compensation. Help him out if you can."

I think it’s a pretty good article and stating these things in real terms as opposed to overly dramatic readings is a good way to defuse

My reaction to half the Sommers-style hustlers is to just spread the word they’re dumbasses with weak arguments. If you think whatever demographic they’re claiming is threatened is actually at risk it’s demonstrably false, and their entire base hinges upon some fear they might have to change. They won’t.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DYvlNiaVQAEWddU.jpg:large

For some background on that the Scottish parliament recently repealed the "Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communications (Scotland) Act 2012" which allowed police to arrest you if you were either at or on your way to a soccer match if you did anything the police judged could be "offensive to a reasonable person". You can still be charged for sectarian breach of the peace

meanwhile also in scotland http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/homenews/16099568.Free_speech_row_as_Scots__Nazi_dog__film_maker_found_guilty_of__being_grossly_offensive_online/

a lot of people forget we don't live in america, and don't have absolute freedom of speech. I'm not going to contribute to making this alt-right sack of shit a cause celebre

we already send so many ppl to jail in the US it wouldn't be good to start jailing ppl for talking

can't help but feel that having Baddiel and Gervais on your side probably doesn't help but

obviously it's fucking madness but in the context of a scotland where teenagers get the jail for singing about the provos it's par for the course

Don't even get why that guy is whining, surely his going to prison will wind up his girlfriend real good

either at or on your way to a soccer match

in some way, aren't some people always either at or on their way to a soccer match?

i certainly am

https://niskanencenter.org/blog/there-is-no-campus-free-speech-crisis-a-close-look-at-the-evidence/

A good article, which is unfortunately struggling against a populist tide. But 'radical professors are brainwashing students' has been a claim since at least the '30s, it's just unfortunate that the Right has found a new audience to sell that nonsense to.

This was also a pretty good distillation of the hypocrisy: http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2018/04/college-kids-need-suck-stop-wh-mean-trump-supporters-like-conservative-op-ed-columnists-need-safe-spaces-avoid-bring-triggered

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/27/nyregion/fordham-students-professor-harassment.html

So at the beginning of this semester, two seniors, Samantha Norman and Eliza Putnam, decided to do something about it. On the first day of class in January, they visited two of Dr. Jaworski’s Philosophical Ethics classes, taught at the university’s Lincoln Center campus, in Manhattan, before the instructor arrived. Standing in front of a white board with about two dozen students folded into desks in front of them, they delivered a warning.

“We introduced ourselves and said, ‘We just want you to know that there’s a history of allegations against this professor and multiple Title IX complaints,’” Ms. Putnam said.

They told the students to take care of themselves and take care of each other, they said. They were in and out in less than five minutes.

Just a few days later, the women received an email asking them to meet with the department of public safety.

Mr. Miltenberg suggested that Dr. Jaworski was being targeted because “the cultural leftists are intolerant of traditional morality.” The professor had intended to teach a course on “sexuality and morality from a traditionalist perspective,” his lawyer said.

This seems like a bad legal strategy...

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/04/03/magazine/why-have-we-soured-on-the-devils-advocate.html

not sure if this was posted and discussed elsewhere, but I enjoyed this essay from nabisco (though I wish it were about 5x longer)

someone on twitter discussing the essay drew the distinction between speech-as-inquiry and speech-as-activism, which I think gets at the heart of the matter. personally, as my professional life becomes more ‘inquiry’-based, I’ve struggled a bit to adapt to the new boundaries of discourse, though I’ve grown to accept that this is what is best for the people to whom it matters the most

america elected the devil president. he does his own pr these days and neither needs nor wants "advocates".