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Comment by reillyse | Hacker News Reader

We have many curbs on alcohol. Many to prevent situations like you describe. Maybe it is responsible to also limit speech especially when it can cause harm.

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Who do you trust to define 'harm'?

I certainly don't trust governments, whether they lean left or right, as they all have heavy biases and big money influencing decision making.

Step one, get rid of the money in politics. Step two, solve people's problems.

Aside from this particular assault which obviously is harm and curbing assault in general should be a priority. How does one distinguish preemptively which speech will cause harm and in what form such that it can be mitigated?

That is an interesting point. But maybe we don't even need to preemptively define harmful speech. You could just say people are responsible for what they say and if somebody then harms someone based on what you said (and it was untrue), you have responsibility.

It would certainly reduce the chance people would say unsubstantiated and harmful things if it was enforced.

I think I agree on principle, but I think in implementation this becomes particularly difficult. To use a silly example, if two people are having ramen at shop and person A says, "oh man, I think this ramen is making me sick" and person B, feeling that their friend A has been hurt by the ramen maker hucks a brick at the ramen shop window late at night and is caught. Where does the blame start and stop, the person who said it? The person who interpreted it and acted in a way they thought was justifiable (for whatever internal reason)? I think the issue with speech, especially mass broadcasted speech is that there are two "rational" parties involved.

I hear what you are saying. I think this class of problem is one that the legal profession have solved mostly . Their solution is the "reasonable person" test. Would a mythical "reasonable person" believe what the person said.

Btw we aren't discussing what an unreasonable person might do with that information, just whether or not a reasonable person might believe what has been said or understand it a certain way.

We can definitely solve for the egregious cases though and we can solve those before getting too hung up on the tough ones in the middle.

And just to be clear. You are always permitted to say true things. It's only when you say false things that we need these curbs. What I'm really talking about is curbing "false speech".

Breaking into someone's house and assaulting them with a hammer is already illegal. This is also an isolated incident and not a pattern of behavior.

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