Steven Pinker defends free speech

[Brian37]

Free speech is very important.

I do accept a value pluralist system however, where the ideal of free speech needs to be balanced against proscribing harmful speech. The obvious example is yelling "fire" in a crowded theatre when there is not a fire. Other examples though, such as promoting hatred, discrimination, and whipping up prejudices, show that there are limits to the acceptable free expression of speech, as this kind of speech clearly causes harm to groups and individuals who neither need nor deserve it.

On the other hand, I think free thought and critical thinking are extremely important, in particular pertaining to social issues. Empathy and compassion are also important however, in my view.

Any thoughts?

We have laws that limit speech, like not being allowed to yell FIRE in a theater. We also have laws that ban you from calls to violence.

You have to be careful about fighting bigotry by trying to cover it up with the term "harmful speech".

There are two huge problems well intended people do not think about.

1. "Who gets to decide", because merely saying "The bible is fiction" can be seen by those who value it as fact as "harmful".

2. Power shifts over long periods and what you may think merely offends someone they may end up with a majority of power and not simply relegate what you want to say to merely being "offensive" and pass laws they see to silence you because they think it is "harmful".

You can only base laws on the common laws of not acting out in physical violence or calling people to acts of violence. But you cannot silence, nor should you silence speech because you or others find it offensive. If we all got to silence others because we get offended, we could all find reasons to silence others. Being offended is not enough by itself to stop others from saying things that hurt your feelings.

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See edits above.

Critical thinking makes the real difference as I see it. Dogmatism breeds bigotry.

Scapegoating "despised" demographics is a method of absolving oneself of personal accountability, and demagogues can do a lot of harm there using such methods. Their aim is not to get people to think.

Again, critical thought, in addition to encouraging freethought as opposed to a herd mentality, seem to make all the difference here.

Part of accepting reality is that evolution's main goal is not about educated vs less educated winning, the main goal of evolution is to get to the point of reproduction.

You can only educate others the value of critical thinking, but our species even with that good intent also cannot force a perfect world either.