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Comment by havelhovel | Hacker News Reader

I’m not following this logic. People are expressing themselves and others are responding as they see fit: agreement, condemnation, silence, etc. It sounds like a marketplace of ideas in a free society. No one is having their basic human rights taken away from them because someone else called them a bigot.

If you’re uncomfortable with someone’s ideas making them a pariah, you’re describing a basic social dilemma that many can sympathize with, but not an Orwellian future being pushed upon us by the political left.

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My ideal view of the marketplace of ideas is that it engenders discussion about those ideas, responses to them, and ultimately deepens the view to a more nuanced, accurate place. One problem, undoubtedly, is that discussing anything through some means of communication is difficult, especially when we prefer short form communications to long form ones. So instead of discussing, we tend to think in terms dog whistles & a few short words are connected to an argument that we've heard from the other side and that is where things start to go downhill. People do not seem to be engaging the actual arguments in this marketplace of ideas, but rather with the people presenting the argument & what they think those arguments are.

>People are expressing themselves and others are responding as they see fit: agreement, condemnation, silence, etc. It sounds like a marketplace of ideas in a free society.

So to you, a marketplace of ideas is one side dictates what is allowed to be said, and anyone who deviates from this deserves to be a pariah? What about that is free or a marketplace of ideas?

>No one is having their basic human rights taken away from them because someone else called them a bigot.

You are literally calling for the removal of basic human rights when you say that silencing people is a reasonable response to them saying something you don't like. Do you even realize what you're suggesting?

>I’m not following this logic.

Not surprising. The operative word is free. People are allowed to hold opinions they want, not ones you or your group approve of. You are completely within your rights to dislike any thoughts and speech you see fit. But that is where your free speech rights end - you're not allowed to use those rights to limit the rights of others. That is cowardly anti-intellectualism and it's a hallmark of internet 'liberalism'.

Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar. This thread is managing to stay barely on the ok side, and your comment here crosses noticeably closer to flamewar hell. Please step the other way instead. You'll make a better argument that way, have a greater chance of persuading others or at least connecting with them, and maybe even feel better too.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Well, unless you consider the violence coming with the Antifa driven riots. There have been many cases where dissenting voices, including journalists, have been physically attacked in the last couple of weeks.

The same could be said of mobs in universities, cancel culture, etc.

There are plenty of examples on both sides of politics right now of peoples' basic human rights being violated.

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