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Comment by chrisco255 | Hacker News Reader

Did you read the last sentence about "being allowed back into society"? Ostracism for the purpose of social thought control is perverse, tyrannical, and disturbing on every level. I'm amazed at how OP could in one sentence complain about the rise of extremism and by the end of the paragraph prescribe an extreme form of human torture to solve it.

I reckon people who reason like this probably think "extremism" is some concretely defined thing rather than a subjective thing that depends on the culture, the time, and the place.

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I read that as referring to people who were already ostracized for their belives having an option to get back in.

You seem to have read it a completely different way. Are you by chance worried about the second order effects? Perhaps that the existence of such a pill would increase the range of believes that people are ostracized for?

You can't force people to hang out with extremists, so of course those people will be shunned. Are you suggesting we should make it a crime to not hang out with people who want you dead?

If they're not allowed to improve, then how are they to rejoin society again?

edit: wait, are you suggesting joining ISIS or the Aryan Brotherhood is just a subjective difference of opinion?

What is the legal definition of extremist? And what is the legal crime they are violating?

Extremism is a loaded word that has no real concrete meaning. Therefore, it can mean whatever the opinion makers want it to mean. And you can justify all sorts of abuse and torture with that sort of propaganda.

This game has been played many times in human history and it never ends well.

Neo-Nazis, ISIS members, Proud Boys?

Murder, arson, kidnapping? Hate speech, harassment, cyberstalking?

Like in the 1940s, when we failed to take extremism seriously and 6+ million were killed?

What about Communists? Socialists? Libertarians? PETA? Antifa? Twitter's executive board? Are they extremists?

I can find probably millions of people that would agree that they are in fact, extremists. In fact, the Nazis argued that Jews and Communists were evil. Of course, in Soviet Russia and China, the anti-communists were the extremists...and died by the tens of millions as a result.

To the extent that laws are actually broken, those crimes should be prosecuted.

Speech is a natural right and needs to be protected as such.

The U.S. went through the 40s all the while generally protecting the first amendment. The German Nazis went around torturing and bullying everyone who disagreed with them. Your proposal is closer to Nazism than anything I've heard of.

You know, I'm not from the US, so I probably have a different view on free speech.

People should be allowed to say what they want, BUT - If anyone thinks that they have to say or think that jews/black people/woman are evil, less worth etc., they can fuck right off. In my opinion there's no justifiable reason whatsoever to be racist, xenophobic and the like.

Don't get me wrong, I perfectly know what you mean, and on a certain level I perfectly agree... but where do you draw the line? What about THEIR opinions about YOUR opinions? Do you see what I mean? I think the only reasonable place where to draw the line is the public incitement of violence over other people. If someone thinks that blacks/woman are less worthy, I'd rather try to engage them in discourse or, last resort, ignore them. But censor them is a double edged sword.

You know, you are really opening my eyes right now. I never really thought about this aspect. With "engage them" you mean that you rather talk to them, right?

Yes, engage in discourse. I mean, have a conversation and argument why I think they are wrong or whatever. I don't see any other way, to hate or shut off the haters doesn't sound like a solution, because from a certain perspective we are the "other side" too. It's delicate.

Communism and socialism were the most murderous ideologies of the past 100 years. Should we not consider communists and socialist to be extremists?

People have been disenfranchised and called extreme for much less than your examples. People being fired over tweets comes to mind.

It doesn't matter who's doing the disenfranchising if it's ubiquitous.

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