You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

ChristianKl comments on Open Thread, May 25 - May 31, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion

3 Post author: Gondolinian 25 May 2015 12:00AM

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

Article Navigation

Comments (301)

CC Licenced

Tags: open_thread

Comments (301)

Sort By: Best

Show:

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: ChristianKl 27 May 2015 11:08:47PM 2 points [-]

I am only concerned about situations that you yourself would agree have been settled beyond dispute are meaningless cases of inflammatory rhetoric that hardened bigots nevertheless continue to spread.

I honestly don't know what that means.

In some sense the question of whether the earth is older than 6000 thousand years is settled beyond dispute. At the same time there are young earth creationists. Allowing real diversity means being okay with their being young earth creationists who disagree with me on the subject.

The same goes for the question whether gay people cause earthquakes. Obviously they don't, but I still don't want to use government power to suppress that belief.

On LW I would downvote a person who expose either of those beliefs but I wouldn't make that ground for calling for deletion of his posts or him getting banned.

1) Principles should be chosen on the basis of doing the most good and prevent the most harm, right?

Yes, that means you look at actual real world cases. I'm not aware of any case in the US in the decades where "a bigot gives a great inflammatory speech that inspires bands of dissatisfied young men to prevent every store in town from selling groceries to some minority".

2) Do you agree that incidents of the kind I described are numerous, serious and compelling enough to be worth taking notice of?

At the moment I don't see any problem in the US from the inability to forbid inflammatory rhetoric due to Brandenburg v. Ohio.

Comment author: halcyon 28 May 2015 03:38:31AM * -1 points [-]

I'm a native Bengali speaker, so my syntax may be problematic. I later glossed that sensence as something like, "ChristianKl admits X is a case of inflammatory rhetoric being spread by bigots, etc."

I'm totally in favor of open public debate, even regarding positions that the liberal police would dub "bigoted". I'm not talking about real debates, I'm talking about cases that really are crazy propaganda. Would you say that under some circumstances, it is legitimate to curb the spread of such propaganda?

In particular, I'm in favor of all views being aired on LW. Hopefully, nobody is going to pick on homosexuals just because someone expresses anti-gay sentiments here, and it is not even possible to pose the more serious threats over the internet.

I'm an Indian, not an American. Communal riots are a real thing in India. Would you say that under some circumstances, curbing hateful propaganda has a real chance of minimizing violence? If so, are any such cases legitimate?

This is how I clarified my position farther down the thread: "I'm genuinely on the fence on this one. My only claim is that one legitimate argument to do it (censor inflammatory rhetoric) does exist. Depending on the specific case, that reason may be outweighed by more significant arguments."

Comment author: ChristianKl 28 May 2015 12:36:42PM 1 point [-]

"I'm genuinely on the fence on this one. My only claim is that one legitimate argument to do it (censor inflammatory rhetoric) does exist. Depending on the specific case, that reason may be outweighed by more significant arguments."

Laws are written as general documents. You don't write laws that say: "Censorship is supposed to be done by the government on a case by case basis after careful analysis of the case."

At least we don't do this in the West. As a result we have a stable democratic system. Having a stable democratic system is a way to have a peaceful society where communal riots aren't commonplace.

Unfortunately I don't know enough about the dynamics of Indian communal politics to give recommendation about how India should specifically deal with it.

The Wikipedia summary suggests that there a provision in India to censure speech to protect the public order. That seems much more targeted at riots than provisions about speech against minorities (hate speech laws).

Comment author: halcyon comment score below threshold [+] (14 children)

Comment author: VoiceOfRa 02 June 2015 03:47:07AM 2 points [-]

On the other hand, consider that in the 20th century, England, the land of consequentialists, survived, while Germany, the land of deontologists, collapsed.

England also had a much stronger tradition of free speech than Germany.

Comment author: VoiceOfRa 02 June 2015 03:46:11AM 2 points [-]

Any form of speech is allowed as long as the other side is allowed to answer.

What counts as the "other side". Do I have to invite the flat earth society whenever I want to talk about geography?

Comment author: ChristianKl 29 May 2015 01:37:33AM 0 points [-]

Any form of speech is allowed as long as the other side is allowed to answer. Any speech that the other side is not allowed to answer is forbidden.

What does "allowed to answer" mean? A Singapore style mandate that a newspaper has to give room for the government to tell it's side of the story?

On the other hand, consider that in the 20th century, England, the land of consequentialists, survived, while Germany, the land of deontologists, collapsed.

England lost their empire in the 20th century. Germany losts wars but it didn't collapse.

(Would you say it would be better to consider pluralism as an ideal to aspire to, or should we try to reach it all at once? Eg. We can forbid inflammatory rhetoric with the aim of gradually loosening the restrictions.)

If "we = India" then I unfortunately don't know enough about the Indian political conflicts. It would also help if you would use more concrete terms then "inflammatory rhetoric". That term is broader then just speech that threatens the public order.

Comment author: halcyon 29 May 2015 02:17:56AM * -1 points [-]

The situation I am thinking of is like this: Suppose you get up in public and give a long speech denouncing some minority. If they want to, representatives of that minority should be allowed to tell their side of the story from the same platform without being molested or demeaned. If that's allowed, you can say whatever you like about them. Is that not good?

The German state failed completely and a warlord wannabe came to power. (Although it just occurred to me that you might not call the failed democracies that turn into dictatorships in Latin America "failed states", and you might not describe the transition as a "collapse". I don't know the correct term for such polities, but that's the kind of state Germany was.) A similar situation occurred in Russia, only an insane religious group took control there. (I know less about Russia, but my information comes from Kotkin's biography of Stalin, a monumental work of scholarship which describes the state's total failure in lurid detail. Russia is another country besides France where the aristocratic ideal failed completely and doomed the country to revolution. However, Russia's collapse was much more severe than Germany's. The latter's militarism at least formally grew as a continuation of the old order.)

The German warlord tried to invade Russia even though Russia wouldn't have invaded Germany any time soon, lost, and the nation was divided up among the victors. The victors then had a falling out between themselves and Germany was divided into two halves for over 40 years! Thanks to the failure of the state and the opportunist policies of the warlord, each of the victors got to indoctrinate Germans living in their territories with their pet ideologies, and a staggering 10% of the world population of Germans died during the war. (Not to mention territorial losses.)

And you say Germany didn't collapse? I'm sorry, I completely disagree with your interpretation of what occurred.

Meanwhile, England lost its empire after its fight with Germany, but the state didn't collapse at all. It even put someone like Winston Churchill who had definite warlord-like tendencies and might have become one in any other society in power during the war, removed him after the war, and then brought him back later when he campaigned separately as a peacetime leader. They might of course have done better in hindsight, but that is breathtaking success as a society as far as I'm concerned.

(You can of course trace the historical causes of Germany's collapse as far back as you like. Here are some relatively short descriptions that give an idea of the ground-level realities of the Weimar republic: http://www.incatena.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=37184&p=1086708&hilit=democracy#p1086708 http://www.incatena.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=37184&p=1086725&hilit=democracy#p1086725 http://www.incatena.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=37184&p=1086786&hilit=democracy#p1086786 Though none of these specifically address Hitler's takeover, you can probably tell that the situation was a close parallel to what you find in parts of Latin America.

I can't find similar short descriptions of what Germany was like prior to WWI, but here is Chesterton speaking his mind in his own amusing way: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11560 Reading between the lines, you can see how Germany's foreign policy managed to alienate all its neighbors at the time.)

Comment author: ChristianKl 29 May 2015 01:12:15PM 1 point [-]

If they want to, representatives of that minority should be allowed to tell their side of the story from the same platform without being molested or demeaned. If that's allowed, you can say whatever you like about them. Is that not good?

To me this seems to be badly thought out. You don't specify a mechanism. Are those people who hold those speeches supposed to preregister them so that the opposing site can bring a speaker? If a speech goes against blacks and multiple black people want to hold the counter speech, who decides which of them get's the speaking slot?

You can of course trace the historical causes of Germany's collapse as far back as you like.

German territory is bigger today than it was 200 years ago. You could call Germany to be in perpetual collapse over it's history but that doesn't change the fact that it's today the strongest economic force in Europe and you have Greeks speaking about the 4th Reich.

Comment author: halcyon 31 May 2015 03:21:29AM * -1 points [-]

I haven't specified a mechanism because I'm proposing a principle, not a law as yet. Laws are allowed to implement the principle imperfectly even when the principle is accepted as the basis of society.

(For example, let's start with the absolutely minimal requirement: Would you agree with a law that requires all platforms to at least declare that they abide by the pluralist principle of letting the opposition voice their point of view regardless of what goes on in practice? If this is acceptable, we can move on to more rigorous demands like declaring platforms that routinely violate this requirement to be illegal. We can decide on punishments afterwards.)

I'm not saying Germany isn't doing well today, but today's Germany is keeping up with and outcompeting the Anglo-Saxon world on its own terms. Germany the deontological "theocracy" (I can justify the term) collapsed in the 20th century and disappeared forever from history. (Even if the transition to dictatorship was not a collapse, surely its results qualify as a genuine collapse.

I don't understand your point regarding territories. I have tried to reconstruct your argument in various ways, but none of my attempted interpretations that hold together are relevant in the context of the utterance. Germans were forcibly relocated, etc. Are you unaware of the German territorial shrinkage, or are you just being cute by referring to the multiple German nations that previously existed? If it's the latter, that's like saying the Italian nation gained a lot of territory in the national unification, even though territories like the Azure Coast, which were culturally Italian, voted to join France. Ask the Germans if they feel like they've won out after all. If I were inclined to make arguments of this kind, I could propose the Holy Roman Empire as a German state larger than today's Germany.)

How many German generals today would cite Kant and Fichte as the basis for their thinking? How many thinkers would use their formulations for calling the Germans to war? (Despite all of Habermas' tirades against "instrumental rationality", his thought is saturated with the pragmatic tradition, and German thinkers today are instinctively consequentialist rather than deontological, though still not instrumentalist or utilitarian per se.

Even when they try to deny it, their appeals to consequences remain extensive. For example, Habermas was driven to look to the English intellectual tradition when formulating his philosophy because he decided that the German tradition lacked the resources to criticize Nazism. This means that even if he decides never to appeal to consequences again, at the root, his philosophy was motivated by an appeal to consequences: fascism was bad and he wanted the resources to criticize it.)

(China is also not too shabby at the moment, but to say that Chinese civilization did not collapse in the 20th century would be misleading to say the least. Contemporary Germany is not deontological in the same sense that contemporary India does not represent an authentic continuation of Hindu or Mughal civilizations with respect to their intellectual traditions.)

Comment author: ChristianKl 31 May 2015 08:25:43AM 0 points [-]

For example, let's start with the absolutely minimal requirement: Would you agree with a law that requires all platforms to at least declare that they abide by the pluralist principle of letting the opposition voice their point of view regardless of what goes on in practice?

Requiring people to declare that they stand by a specific principle that's not in line with their platform is not good. In general I don't think that laws that require people to declare that they stand by any set of specific principles are good. I don't believe in thought crime.

If I run a blog, I don't think there should be a requirement that I allow comments on that blog that allow anybody that disagrees with me to voice their opinions on my blog. On the other hand pluralism means that they are free to host their own blog. and voice their criticism on their blog. I'm not allowed to run a DDoS on their blog but that's needs no additional law.

How many German generals today would refer to Kant and Fichte to rouse the fighting spirit of their soldiers?

At the time Kant lived there was no unified Germany.

Fichte believed in Germany, but it's important to note that at the time he did that there was no German nation but a lot of separate German territories.

You could say that the "German idea" collapsed by there being a German state. It became the European idea. The German idea was to have a political government that has more territory than the states in which Kant and Fichte lived. Today we speak of Europe and the European project very similar than Kant and Fichte spoke about Germany.

Among current civil servant the sentiment that's they execute the law because they swore an oath on it, even when they disagree with is still alive and well. It neither died in 1918, 1933, 1945 or 1968 or whenever you see the collapse of Germany.

Our standard legal doctrine still works roughly the same way. In our democracy we have less privacy protection than there were 120 years ago but privacy is still more important in Germany today than it is in the US.

Comment author: halcyon 01 June 2015 04:44:56AM * -1 points [-]

So you really do think that "the Italian nation gained a lot of territory in the national unification, even though territories like the Azure Coast, which were culturally Italian, voted to join France." I honestly don't know what to say to that. I said "nation", not "state". A nation is not a nation state.

I think your main error is to conflate duty with legalism. The ethics of duty is decidedly NOT legalistic, it is existential at the root. (The Dewey book gives some concrete examples.) Kant was of part-Scottish ancestry and was inspired by Scottish thinkers to try and come up with a deontological/existential approach to legalism, but it is consequentialism that is naturally legalistic. (with exceptional periods of "emergency", etc, but on the existential side you have stridently anti-legalistic eschatologists like Dostoevsky or even Berdyaev, really: https://archive.org/details/russianidea017842mbp Dostoevsky would of course have denied being an existentialist, and in a strict sense he would've been right, but I'd have trouble honestly justifying the claim that his approach is not existential in the loose sense that's relevant in this context, where Kant is also existential in the final analysis.)

(I'll let Orwell explain how much you owe to the culture of England: http://wikilivres.ca/wiki/The_Lion_and_the_Unicorn England is probably the least existential culture of our times. As you probably know, the Austrian school economists were trying to theorize the developments in England. Many German theorists belonged to English-inspired schools like that, but even legalist thinkers who considered themselves proudly non-English were more like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSNJGymnLG4

That is satire, but notice how progressive Germans were accused of imitating the English in EXACTLY the same way that Islamists accuse progressive Arabs of copying the West. The nature of the relationship of England to the rest of Europe was previously identical to the nature of the relationship of Europe to the rest of the world.

That's what you get when you have existentialism at the bottom of your legalism. (And once you approve of the existential approach, it's difficult to shut the door when extremists start clamoring for a purer version of the approach to which you've already fixed your seal of approval.) I strongly disagree with the notion that the contemporary European idea is anything like that. (See Habermas' objections against Heidegger. Habermas is arguably the philosopher of contemporary Europe.) Even the notion of an "European idea" including Britain is an oversimplification because if you ask Europeans, many of them will tell you that England has a different culture from the rest of Europe. You need to integrate a lot more facts to get less crooked outlines of such matters IMO.

I don't want you to think I'm putting German culture down or anything, but proposing an interpretation of "the German idea" that has the figure of Faust expurgated from it is like confusing Islamic culture with the Arabian Nights theme.)

continue this thread »

ChristianKl comments on Open Thread, May 25 - May 31, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion

Article Navigation

Comments (301)

Nearest Meetups

Virtual Study Room

Recent Comments

Recent Posts

Recent Open Threads

Recent Rationality Diaries

Recent Wiki Edits

Top Contributors, 30 Days

Recent Karma Awards

Comments (301)

Top Contributors, 30 Days

You'll need to login or register to do that

(Don't worry, it only takes a few seconds)

Create

Login