taw comments on Schelling fences on slippery slopes - Less Wrong

179 Post author: Yvain 16 March 2012 11:44PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (189)

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: taw 14 March 2012 09:39:25AM 12 points [-]

In parts of Europe, they've banned Holocaust denial for years and everyone's been totally okay with it.

You should look closer, they're banning speech left and right all across Europe under variety of trivial reasons.

Comment author: thomblake 28 March 2012 03:00:45PM *  4 points [-]

That does not follow. As Giles suggests, the UK does not have a law against Holocaust denial, and the UK is the relevant country for libel tourism, which is the only phenomenon you linked to.

Furthermore, the UK standards for libel are very old, and there has been some success in the UK in reducing them. This is partially in response to pressure from the US, which no longer extradites for speech violations that are not illegal in the US, in direct response to libel tourism.

I'd link to a reference with details on all this, but you already did.

Comment author: Giles 17 March 2012 04:27:11PM 3 points [-]

I thought that libel tourism was basically a UK thing, which doesn't have a law against Holocaust denial.

I guess I'm saying:

  • Different nations can have different Schelling fences
  • Some nations can establish Schelling fences and others can be on slippery slopes. The strategy of the nations with Schelling fences would depend on the extent to which they care about the other nations.
Comment author: Anubhav 14 March 2012 10:10:52AM 7 points [-]

And let's not forget the speech being banned under American influence.