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Comment by throwaway123x2 | Hacker News Reader

I really like his ideas, if not his writing (or speaking?) style.

I especially liked the bit about how society today is more rational (better?) because of guaranteed dissent that was part of the scientific revolution, and we're taking that away with safe spaces and the like.

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I don't see how safe spaces are at odds with that. Just because people want to have some space where they can relax doesn't mean that disagreement is impossible.

There are just less private spaces now, and we have more of an understanding that some people find it extremely hard to find those spaces, so actively ensuring they exist is important for them.

The idea that we have to let people show "dissent" about someone's identity and life by harassing people literally all the time seems obviously wrong to me.

You understand that theres talk of Universities in general being safe spaces.

Edit: For example http://theconversation.com/why-safe-spaces-at-universities-a...

Safe spaces sound benign, if you agree with the people setting it up. If a group you disagree with declares a safe space, it sounds malicious. It probably has a lot to do with those tribal instincts the article talks about.

Note that I'm only commenting on how it sounds, not making any claims of how it is.

No one is arguing that people should be harassed "literally all the time" (or ever).

Some of the more egregious deployments of "safe spaces" in universities happened in response to controversial campus speakers who were deemed to have views that were threatening to some students. According to some campus radical leftists, the very presence of such speakers was "violence" and a literal "threat" to marginalized students.

Of course, the students could simply refuse to attend the talks of speakers they didn't like, but that wouldn't make as dramatic a statement as creating an explicit "safe space" where they could congregate.

>According to some campus radical leftists, the very presence of such speakers was "violence" and a literal "threat" to marginalized students.

And why shouldn't they have a point? If it could be shown, or at least it is plausible, that violence against marginalized students could occur due to a speaker inciting such action or even bringing out groups for it, doesn't that give some case for refusing the admission of such people to campus?

In general I have not seen any reason to consider speech as much different from action, except on the principle that the harm caused is entirely caused by the victim (e.g a hearer) themselves, which seems implausible according to our intuition in a variety of circumstances. In fact, the bifurcation of speech and action seems to trace its way back to a Cartesian mind-body dualism, which is generally rejected by neuroscientists and philosophers today.

Why stop there? What if it could be shown to be plausible that blocking speakers on campus increases tensions and escalates violence because of the suppression of people's views? It doesn't stretch credulity that right wingers are more mad about restricting the expression of their beliefs than they are about the subject itself. For evidence, watch a sample of Fox News -- they're often indignant and "righteously upset" over "being told what to think or say".

That is obviously also a possibility; I'm not arguing that they should be silenced by default, only that it is possible and should not be beyond the reach of a society's purview to do so. For the moment, it seems more plausible that violence erupts due to persuasion and incitement, which is why (for instance) there are already laws against incitement but not against illegalising speech lest it cause high tensions. I assume this question can also be answered empirically.

In the tension between freedom of speech and preventing harmful speech, I wonder if we're approach a Nash equilibrium, or if it's more of an accelerating oscillator.

Safe spaces sound great in theory. In reality they are a mechanism/excuse used to exclude, discriminate, bully, gaslight, physically assault etc. people.

Universities should prepare people for life. By encouraging free exchange of ideas, including uncomfortable ones, we force young adults to strengthen their arguments through dialogue and debate. Safe spaces create ideological echo chambers where people can't learn.

It's also disturbing to hear "dissenting" opinion equated with violence - that just encourages physical violence in response. It's autocratic group think and it really needs to stop. The world outside the academy isn't so forgiving of garbage tribal behavior like that.

autocratic groupthink is a great way to put it

From the point of view of their critics, the fight for safe spaces always has been employing motte-and-bailey tactics [1], where the defensible and reasonable position is that people want some space where they can relax, but the indefensible position that they actually fight for is that the whole world should be converted into a safe space for themselves. As a point in case, as far as I can tell nobody ever insisted that attendance at talks by controversial university speakers be compulsory, or that particular groups of students who felt threatened by them not be allowed to form social clubs or set up meeting spaces in which the opinions from those events are not allowed to be mentioned.

[1] https://heterodoxacademy.org/the-motte-and-the-bailey-a-rhet...

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