Comment by ThrowawayR2 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ThrowawayR2 | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Let's dissect the parent poster's question for instructional purposes:

- If the answer is yes, then the parent poster would excoriate the respondent for being a horrible person.

- If the answer is no, then the parent poster would triumphantly crow that the respondent is not actually against deplatforming / pro-free speech after all.

Astute HN readers should immediately be able to spot the problem: the false dilemma fallacy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma). They have set up an imaginary "free speech absolutist" who must be 100% against any and all speech restrictions if they do not support deplatforming, which is obviously nonsensical; few, if any, such people exist.

So we see that it is an attempt at a gotcha but it doesn't hold up when examined. I have no idea why people think it's clever.

> I condemn deplatforming regardless of who it's being done to

The parent's post is the one who took an absolute stance on deplatforming. I did not invent the stance. You didn't say "I condemn deplatforming", you specifically added a clause that seems to specify that your belief disregards circumstance.

> "They have set up an imaginary "free speech absolutist" who must be 100% against any and all speech restrictions if they do not support deplatforming"

I did not do this. In fact, it would exclude my own belief, which is that I am generally against deplatforming, but admit there are extraordinary circumstances that should be exceptions, like the case of child porn.

Astute HN readers should immediately be able to tell that I am ironically doing the opposite of the accusation, which is pointing out how absolute binaries on this issue don't hold up to scrutiny. Now poster is falling back on a textbook motte-and-bailey claiming to not have said what they did and has retreated to an easier position to defend.

Or perhaps they meant something different by "regardless of who it's being done to", say, that some deplatforming is justified by the exceptional nature of the circumstance but not by preconceived notions of the one being deplatformed. If that's the case, then clarify it rather than attacking me for interpreting your statement in a reasonable way.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com