Imagine if you had to stop doing business with anyone reported as a thief (but not convicted).
Those who accuse and un-person are the villains throughout history. In the past, people were smeared as sexually loose, as belonging to the "wrong" religion, or as having the "wrong" sexual orientation. In the past, people were smeared as being of the "wrong" racial background. Always be wary of those who smear to enforce their power.
A free society is one, where people and ideas can show up, be given a chance, and stand or fall on their character and merits. Evil is recognizable in its epistemological hazards:
- Don't ask questions.
- Don't read or hear the heretical opinion.
- Don't associate with the "wrong" people.
It's the side of evil which uses vilification, seeks to silence, and uses fear against questions.
How do you square this with the recent surge in flat Earth and anti-vaccination beliefs? The merits of truth aren't guaranteed to win this battle.
http://www.mysuncoast.com/2019/03/19/it-made-me-feel-really-...
Anti-vaxxers are what you get when you use death threats and not civil discourse.
The anti-vaxxers send death threats to people who correct their erroneous claims. That's how you shut down reasoned discourse -- by having fervent zealots attack anyone who contradicts them.
Obviously attacking people who disagree with you is the opposite of them having free speech. It suppresses the speech of anyone not willing to be subject to the threats and allows the erroneous information to proliferate unchallenged.
So the problem isn't that the anti-vaxxers got to speak their piece, it's that they're caught up in a subculture that suppresses dissent. Then their subculture declares that two times two equals six and anybody who tries to show otherwise is attacked, which deprives them of reasoned debate as a method for correcting misconceptions, and so the misconceptions persist.
Also anti-vax isn't something new. It dates back to at least the mid 90s and the original Wakefield paper. There were no cult like organisations pushing it at that time. What did exist was a mainstream media willing to push the story for many years, even long after they knew the original paper was faulty. The problem wasn't born out of fervent zealots, it was created by con artists and co-conspirators in the media who exploited liberal ideas of "free speech" and "media balance" to knowingly spread a conspiracy for their own financial gain. There was no "subculture" at the time. I'm not sure you can even really say there is one now, given that anti-vax is one of the conspiracy theories that has wide appeal across different groups (i.e. it exists across the left/liberal/conservative/right political spectrum).
You are trying to push your own ideological position (more "free speech" is good and will solve the problem) onto an issue, and it doesn't fit what actually happened at all, or what we know about how conspiracy theories spread (it's not a lack of counter-information, because conspiracy theories by definition include the fact that they are being suppressed by central authority).
Back to the dawn of vaccines themselves, indeed.
https://www.historyofvaccines.org/index.php/content/articles...
People who don't understand science don't trust random scientists, and there is a reason for that -- anyone can put on a lab coat and say whatever they want. You have to consider the source and actually read the research and determine if it's credible. Most people don't have the training for that, and many of the others don't have the time, but that's not a problem as long as you trust someone who does. Your brother in law is a chemist and you trust his opinion; he trusts the CDC's. When your trusted chemist and your trusted nurse disagree, they get together and hash it out and if they're both being reasonable then one ultimately convinces the other.
The problem comes when you introduce a culture of attacking rather than debating people. Because you're not going to silence the CDC, but you may very well silence the brother in law, and then you create a group of people who don't trust anyone providing the true facts because everyone within their in-group is being silenced.
Which is why, despite a century of various fringe anti-vax misinformation, it's only now, in the climate of filter bubbles and deplatforming, that enough people believe it to compromise herd immunity and allow diseases like measles to stage a comeback.
I don't read what he said that way at all. When one uses force instead of trying to convince, one has admitted to losing the argument.
You are trying to push your own ideological position (more "free speech" is good and will solve the problem) onto an issue, and it doesn't fit what actually happened at all
You're strawmanning here. Free speech is good and did win the argument. Your conceit is that "solving the problem" being the same as "winning the argument" is a false equivalence. Solving the problem is something else entirely.
No one in 2019 publicly defends drunk driving. It still happens. There are southern California communities of explicit white supremacists, but mainstream society shuns them. Those are examples of groups who have thoroughly lost the argument. However, "solving the problem" doesn't mean that the state and industrial complex gets to enforce their will over the populace to the point of creating "thoughtcrime."
I don't want to live in that kind of society. (Tired of having to argue? Looking for a solution which is final?)
I do think that exposing others to pathogens and damaging herd immunity is quantifiable, and we can pass laws around that. It's much preferable to legislate the tangible and physically measurable, instead of creating "thoughtcrime."
Winning a battle is an unfortunate metaphor for public debate or democracy in general. After all, what we want is to discuss options without violence.
Someone has to win elections, right. But that doesn't make the losing option wrong, just not as popular. There are many options that I consider wrong, or very wrong, that are "winning" right now. I accept that situation, at least while there's no need for me to adopt them. What I find scary is what stcredzero points: that many ideas "win" by despicable means.
One side of this debate is inherently violent. People are dying from easily preventable diseases.
>What I find scary is what stcredzero points: that many ideas "win" by despicable means.
Anti-vaccination beliefs are already winning by despicable means because those with virtuous means choose to do nothing.
It's dangerous to call someone having a natural biological reaction to a pathogen, "violent." That label should be reserved for people taking intentional physical action to do other people harm. Anti-vaxxers simply don't fit that category. One can argue that they are being irresponsible. Vaccines, viruses, and diseases are all tangible and physical. It's entirely reasonable to make laws and regulations around those things.
If we start saying that people having ideas is "violent," then we are creating "thoughtcrime" and opening the door to incredible levels of tyranny.
Anti-vaccination beliefs are already winning by despicable means because those with virtuous means choose to do nothing.
As far as I can tell, anti-vax beliefs are thoroughly discredited.
The overall point is that we need to defend our ideas through speech and not through IG/FB censoring anti-vaxx speech.
People should be free to believe what they want to believe. That's a pretty fundamental level of freedom.
The merits of truth aren't guaranteed to win this battle.
There's no guarantee of that. Once the argument is won, legislation can follow.
https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...
"If publishers and editors exert themselves to keep certain topics out of print, it is not because they are frightened of prosecution but because they are frightened of public opinion. In this country intellectual cowardice is the worst enemy a writer or journalist has to face, and that fact does not seem to me to have had the discussion it deserves."
"At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is ‘not done’ to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was ‘not done’ to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals. ... Both publicly and privately you were warned that it was ‘not done’. What you said might possibly be true, but it was ‘inopportune’ and played into the hands of this or that reactionary interest."
"... there is now a widespread tendency to argue that one can only defend democracy by totalitarian methods. If one loves democracy, the argument runs, one must crush its enemies by no matter what means. And who are its enemies? It always appears that they are not only those who attack it openly and consciously, but those who ‘objectively’ endanger it by spreading mistaken doctrines. In other words, defending democracy involves destroying all independence of thought."
"These people don’t see that if you encourage totalitarian methods, the time may come when they will be used against you instead of for you. Make a habit of imprisoning Fascists without trial, and perhaps the process won’t stop at Fascists."
(Ironically, the preface itself was soft-censored in the original publication of "Animal Farm", and it took 25 more years for it to see print.)
Free Speech does just fine against other speech. It's administrative dirty tricks on campus, and the use of corporate force through de-platforming which creates a de facto regime of top-down censorship -- which we have to worry about in 2019. Noam Chomsky called such behavior out in the 80's in the media of the day. Such behavior fits the "propaganda model" described in Manufacturing Consent.
In 2019, it's not the government we have to worry about in terms of free speech. It's powerful corporations and the established media misinforming people and stacking the deck.
Heck, some things have become so heated that there can only be one right answer, ex: global warming. If you dare voice anything other than slavish obedience to this notion. If you DARE question anything about it - from the models/assumptions used to the moralizing - then you are branded an outcast and castigated.