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Comment by freshflowers | Hacker News Reader

It's an easy diversion to label any criticism a "witchhunt".

It's a witchhunt if it's merely an accusation without evidence. In this case, Emil Micheal publicly confirmed the veracity of the Buzzfeed report and apologized. In another example that was labelled a witchhunt, Brendan Eich was on public record as supporting an anti-gay proposal.

It's not a witchhunt if the people in question are attacked over what they do or say and not over unproven allegations.

As for proportionate, that's quite subjective. It's not a coincidence that the subjects tend to be fundamental issues of ethics and ideology over which opinions vary wildly.

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> It's a witchhunt if it's merely an accusation without evidence.

Accusations without evidence are made all the time without turning into a witch hunt. It's an element of "mob justice" and disproportionality that makes for a witch hunt, not whether or not the allegations are true. For instance, McCarthyism was a witch hunt, even though historical evidence now available to us proves there was widespread Communist infiltration of the government and media and that many of the individuals persecuted at the time were, indeed, Communists or Communist sympathizers.

People shouldn't be attacked for what they say.

My idea of free speech is a society where people are not afraid to speak their mind. Absence of government censorship is only a small part of it. It was good enough long ago, when governments were the only powerful groups that could scare you into silence, but today it's no longer enough.

>People shouldn't be attacked for what they say.

> My idea of free speech is a society where people are not afraid to speak their mind.

Aren't the people doing the 'attacking' (assuming you're being metaphorical and I've not missed an account of a physical assault), also simply speaking their mind?

Edit: Just a note that this isn't specific to this case, but the general notion that you can say what you want without being criticized seems to actually limit the speech of others.

I suppose I'm just wishing for a society that would disapprove of political witchhunts the same way it disapproves of Eich's support of Prop 8.

Free speech doesn't protect you from criticism.

Just to follow up on this, Scott Alexander has a great essay more fully fleshing this out.

http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/12/29/the-spirit-of-the-first...

A good response to an argument is one that addresses an idea; a bad argument is one that silences it. If you try to address an idea, your success depends on how good the idea is; if you try to silence it, your success depends on how powerful you are and how many pitchforks and torches you can provide on short notice.

For those who tend to believe free speech should not protect you from criticism/social opprobrium/etc, does the same apply to Communists in Hollywood? Remember, the blacklist was not an act of congress - it was nothing more than an article in the Hollywood Reporter.

A few years ago mainstream opinion was opposed to blacklists, I guess it's different now?

My guess is that people like getting riled up into a mob, and they don't think about the long term effects of their actions. And on the reporters' side, they seem to have gotten a lot more hand to mouth with regards to the money/clicks/furor their articles generate, so there's more stirring of the pot now from them. Just my theory, though. Might just be that the lower friction of the internet makes these events a lot more likely to bubble up, even with the same inputs.

"A good response to an argument is one that addresses an idea; a bad argument is one that silences it."

That doesn't make any sense. People with bad ideas frequently fall to silence when the discussion of countervailing good ideas makes them sound like idiots if they persist. Indeed, that's how good ideas (eventually) win.

What you're describing as "a bad argument" isn't really an argument at all. It's the abandonment of argument in favor of a personal threat.

[EDIT: "threat of violence" changed to "personal threat" to remove confusing specificity.]

This has not been my experience but either way, let's say someone pronounces that 2+2=7. You could respond with "it's actually 4" (address the idea) or "anyone who believes 2+2=7 should be fired" (attempt to silence it, without violence though). There's a pretty clear difference between the two approaches.

You have a right to say what you want. You don't have a right to have people continue to like you when they don't like what you have to say.

Fair enough.

Although disliking a person for their ideas seems rather petty, don't you agree?

> Although disliking a person for their ideas seems rather petty, don't you agree?

No. I'd argue that ideas are pretty much the most relevant and least petty bases for (liking or) disliking a person.

I'd argue that its their reaction to new ideas (as one point), I've met plenty of people who've held opposing views but were open to discussing them. Eventually either they changed or I changed.

Nothing to dislike about them.

The idea that one should be respectfully open to discussing and entertaining differing ideas is, I would say, an important idea.

Certainly, more generally, there are certain ideas that I personally think are more important factors in liking or disliking than other ideas. But I can't think of much that isn't an idea that is more relevant to like/dislike than ideas.

The problem is then deciding which ideas are deserving of debate and which should label the thinker "dislikable"

What rule could I use that overcomes my biases and makes that decision?

You can debate ideas with those you dislike. Disliking someone does not require you to be uncivil.

Read the article - it is not about legal rights. No one disputes that blacklisting communists is legal.

I'm not talking about rights in the legal sense. Maybe expectation would be a better word.

"A good response to Sarkeesian [a woman that gamergate hates] is to point out that she's blatantly misrepresenting various games in her videos. A bad response is to publish caricatures of her engaged in sexual activity and talk about how the world would be better if she were dead."

In that context, would you say "You have a right to say what you want. You don't have a right to have people continue to like you..."? Is that a reasonable response?

Certainly Sarkessian cannot have an "expectation" that people won't criticize her (if "expectation" means "belief about the future").

Freedom of speech does not include freedom of consequences for said speech.

It includes freedom from certain kinds of consequences, for certain kinds of speech...

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