Memories of the 28th Century

If no one ever said anything of value, then it wouldn't make any difference whether there was free speech. And if I were the only one in the world who knew any accurate information, then free speech would be pointless, because everyone except me would just make noise, rather than making real, useful speech. But it is possible that any and every person (almost) might utter something of value, so allowing free speech is a good idea. Please understand that this is my opinion; there are some people who believe that only they are capable expressing anything that might be useful. To people of this sort free speech is a wasteful thing.

There are many people who believe something or many things without question. I wonder if this is a result of Asperger's Syndrome or something else along those lines. This has become an issue recently, because some people who claim political correctness have been asserting that the opinions of others were not valid. And there are people who think that speech should be restricted to speech that does not harm, and the word "harm" is defined as anything that they don’t like.

People can claim that harm was being done to them by speech to silence the other side of the discussion. Using claims of harm to silence speech that disagrees with one's preferred opinion is a logical fallacy 'Argument from Adverse Consequences'. Actually this goes somewhat further, because it claims that harm is done by merely saying something. But it is not an argument against the facts or the logic, so it is a fallacy. Sometimes assertions of harm being done are attacks against the speaker, and that makes these ad hominem arguments. Any argument that moves the argument away from discussing the subject of discussion is a red herring. The claim that disagreement would cause harm is among those logical fallacies, because such comments are intended to take the argument away from the substance and into the personality of a participant.

Unfortunately, many people who claim that disagreement inflicts harm on them are incapable of realizing when they have lost an argument, and this can lead to further problems. In the realm of human interaction speech is a two way street. Whenever someone opts to end discussion, that person has conceded defeat if there was a matter of contention.

That sort of argument suggests that the persons using them may have a developmental problem, something on the autism spectrum. I suppose that means we should take pity on them, but before we can pity, we will have to get them to understand that their opinions need support in facts and logic, the same as for everyone else.

Freedom of speech is a two way street. If I want to be able to express myself freely, then I will have to let others do the same, even when they are completely wrong. And if others want freedom to express themselves freely, then they will have to concede the same privilege to everyone else.

Some people think that certain kinds of speech should be treated differently. Religious speech is high on the list of things that people think should be given a privileged position. But other sorts of ideology are sometimes accorded a similar position. It’s as if they think that Gods deserve more respect than others. If the Gods or Goddesses come down and speak face-to-face with me, then I will accord them more consideration, but until that happens I will consider the words said to be from them to be from the humans who say them.

It is possible that those who insist that only they can say anything worthy of free expression are, as I suggested above, well up on the autism scale. It can be extremely difficult for such people to understand that reciprocity is necessary for free speech, but we should still accord them the privilege of trying to communicate, even though they will not grant that privilege to others.

That leads me to wonder if anyone has psychoanalyzed the major prophets of major religions, but that’s for a different post.


https://www.academia.edu/185499/Libe...of_Free_Speech

http://liberatednow.blogspot.com/201...yis-of-mo.html