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Dr. Quadragon ❌'s posts Post Back to profile
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Dr. Quadragon ❌

@nycta "free speech" isn't defined as being "free of consequence".

I mean, unless you're, like, in puberty or something.

29 October at 23:18 | Open on mastodon.ml
7 comments
Никта

@drq "isn't defined", sure, minor informal narrative nuances aside, though, essentially "isn't", nonetheless

29 October at 23:46 | Open on mastodon.ml
Dr. Quadragon ❌
Никта

@drq in abstraction, free speech doesn't exist.

Speech with no consequences is no speech. Objective consequences of speech are religious phenomena. Disregarding that, speech can only have subjective consequences. Including reaction by "authorities".

"Free speech" is a decoy, used to distract from questioning narratives. "Free speech" is a disarmament tactic. "Free speech" is what's on offer when control is not.

30 October at 0:35 | Open on mastodon.ml
Dr. Quadragon ❌

@nycta Nobody in the whole world older than 12 defines free speech as being free of consequence.

Free speech is an agreement between the state and the people, prescribing that the state has no right to use violence to coerce you into saying something or punish you for your speech.

In other words, you ought not to be legally imprisoned or killed for your words alone.

This is it. No more, no less. All the other consequences that might come - are still there, they are intrinsic not to just speech, but the act of doing. You do something - you will be affected by it. Saying something is the same - you will be affected by the consequences of what you're saying. *The state* isn't allowed to prosecute you for it, though. But people just can do whatever they want to respond to it. Up to and including give you a beautiful pony as a gift, or clock you in the teeth.

@nycta Nobody in the whole world older than 12 defines free speech as being free of consequence.

Free speech is an agreement between the state and the people, prescribing that the state has no right to use violence to coerce you into saying something or punish you for your speech.

In other words, you ought not to be legally imprisoned or killed for your words alone.

30 October at 0:48 | Open on mastodon.ml
Никта

@drq that's a definition of free speech constructed in terms of state-public power imbalance.

Now abstract from informal narrative nuances such as people, state and legality, define it in terms of general power struggle over narrative, to arrive at a natural conclusion of complete impossibility of its existence due to logical contradiction. A logical contradiction due to Newton's Flaming Laser Sword specifically.

30 October at 7:58 | Open on mastodon.ml
Dr. Quadragon ❌

@nycta And why the hell would I do that?

I'm not a philosophical idealist. I don't believe in "pure abstractions", sorry. Freedom of speech is an idea. Ideas are tools. Tools are only as good as they are applicable to certain context.

We have a societal context where we have a power imbalance between the people and the overarching entity we call the state. Freedom of speech is a tool made to balance the scale, in order to prevent tyranny. That's it. If there was no such imbalance, there would have been no need to protect such idea. It would have been just the state of things. Or, as one famous Alternian thinker once said - "HUMANS HAVE A WORD FOR THAT?"

Pure abstractions, if they even do exist, have no consequence, and they gain those only applied to a context, therefore losing their purity and becoming leaky. So...

@nycta And why the hell would I do that?

I'm not a philosophical idealist. I don't believe in "pure abstractions", sorry. Freedom of speech is an idea. Ideas are tools. Tools are only as good as they are applicable to certain context.

We have a societal context where we have a power imbalance between the people and the overarching entity we call the state. Freedom of speech is a tool made to balance the scale, in order to prevent tyranny. That's it. If there was no such imbalance, there would have...

30 October at 17:49 | Open on mastodon.ml
Никта replied to Dr. Quadragon ❌

@drq You could do that because of postmodernity, because there are a lot more ways of silencing people, other than legal imprisonment or execution, as well as a lot more agents, other than the state, actively implementing silencing.

This isn't a pure abstraction, this could be, if you'd wish so, a faithful representation of state of affairs, true not just today but the entire time language exists. Apply this optics wherever you wish and you're going to find it there — evolution and survival of the fittest among multi-memeular structures, constantly duking it out. Or don't, because as you have noted, it's farther away from actual life, not closer to it.

@drq You could do that because of postmodernity, because there are a lot more ways of silencing people, other than legal imprisonment or execution, as well as a lot more agents, other than the state, actively implementing silencing.

This isn't a pure abstraction, this could be, if you'd wish so, a faithful representation of state of affairs, true not just today but the entire time language exists. Apply this optics wherever you wish and you're going to find it there — evolution and survival of the...

30 October at 19:06 | Open on mastodon.ml
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