Hacker News Reader

Comment by maire | Hacker News Reader

I see all the time in modern discussions that people use the same words but have different definitions in their head of what those words mean.

It might be that in the UK when people say "Free Speech" they mean Bertrand Russell's definition. I give the article that leeway since I don't know. But in America when when people say "Free Speech" they mean the 1st Amendment which predated Bertrand Russell and is more common.

When two people are communicating using common words the definition of those words need to be common otherwise communication does not happen. Otherwise you are just using jargon.

View on HN

> But in America when when people say "Free Speech" they mean the 1st Amendment which predated Bertrand Russell and is more common.

John Locke's 'A Letter Concerning Toleration', which also deals with free speech, predates your 1st amendment.

It is indeed common to conflate free speech with 1st amendment protections in the US, but it is still an error to do so.

Much of American constitution idea were conceived by 17th century British hipsters.

John Locke, Adam Smith, etc.

> when people say "Free Speech" they mean the 1st Amendment which predated Bertrand Russell and is more common.

But "free speech" predates both Russel and the 1st Amendment. And, how do you know what they mean? It's not like the debate is settled and there's no controversy around the issue.

We are talking about a company based in San Francisco.

I am pretty sure they changed the phrase to "freedom of expression" and removed the passage that said this was the original definition of free speech so in my mind they corrected the article enough to get their point across without getting bogged down.

Wouldn't changing the phrase to "1st Amendment" get their point across even better, if that's what they meant? It's 8 characters shorter than "freedom of expression", so if anything it's the latter that's bogging things down.

I don't agree that "freedom of speech" in the US is only and always equated with the First Amendment. Even if it were, the article is unambiguously concerned with the broader principle, so we should consider the article in that context.

I pushed back on your mention of the distinction mainly due to a growing tendency in which people dismiss concerns about constraints on freedom of speech/expression/opinion by arguing such concerns are only valid insofar as the First Amendment applies. (Not to say you were doing that yourself.) At best it's a tiresome debate tactic; to the extent it's believed, it's a dangerously narrow misapprehension of one of our fundamental social tenets and civil rights.

> in America when when people say "Free Speech" they mean the 1st Amendment

Isn't it quite presumtive of you to assume that everyone means the same thing by "Free Speech". That seems highly unlikely to me.

> When two people are communicating using common words the definition of those words need to be common otherwise communication does not happen. Otherwise you are just using jargon.

Yes, but that doesn't mean that words or phrases have a single globally umambiguous meaning. Typically maintaining productive communication means avoiding using contested/controversial terms like "free speech" in an unqualified way entirely and creating and exaplaining new terms to disambiguate exactly which version of the concept you mean.

This might be my imagination - but I think you changed "Free Speech" to "Freedom of Expression." If so, this change makes a lot of sense. This change captures the intent of your article without confusion.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com