Topic: The free speech poll - page 4. (Read 8494 times)

Even if you consider this "conspiracy" or "incitement" and/or a form of aggression, there is still the principle of proportional response to consider. How would one defend the claim that violence, of any sort, is a proportional response to a spoken statement, however threatening?

Threats matter when it comes to contracts because contracts agreed to under duress are void. They also matter when it comes to self-defense, as one consideration in determining whether there is an imminent risk of irreversible harm. Outside of those domains, only deliberate harm can justify a violent response, because only then is a violent response proportional to the offense.

75% think this is OK.

And the best excuse you can come up with is "Murder is just an example - some people think homosexuality is just as bad."

A murder is just an example. Just replace "murder" with "having homosexual contact" or "denying God" or anything else... There are people that think that murder is not as bad as the latter two...

I'm amazed.

You guys really are debating whether its OK to incite someone to murder or to tell someone you will pay them to murder.

wow.. interesting question.. didn't vote though, because I am in doubts.

free speech in its extreme could have negative consequences.. so should we rather fight consequences or freedom of speech that causes them?

even if it was a joke about 200 bitcoins.. it could be misunderstood by killer. in fact, the public message doesn't need even to mention blue-eyed people or bitcoins.. literally any message being exposed to billions of people can cause some random crazy guy to pick up a gun and commit a murder.

and both (the 'joker' and the 'killer') could have moral justifications for their actions (even though most of you wouldn't agree with them).

if nobody enforces common moral and everybody supports free speech in its extreme, then probably this should be considered to be "OK situation" (you know.. different people have different moral.. it's a pity, of course, that they ate your leg.. but that's how they live.. and you better don't go there and protect yourself)

it sounds scary, but maybe our world is much more scary (we just prefer not to think about it).

I expected this response. Yes, [specific person] still has a choice. But can you blame him for the murder, if there really is no other option, such as removing the threat? I'd say most people would would rather kill another person (not if it's their daughter, but that was not the question) than being killed (although I could be wrong on that). That doesn't make it right, but it does mean that the threat can reliably turn a human being into a murder weapon. So, it does mean that more responsibility lies in the hands of the person who made the threat.

I am missing an option:

If you, [specific person], don't kill a blue-eyed person right now, I'll kill you, and after that I'll let someone else kill a blue-eyed person.

For most things, I am quite a free-speech fundamentalist, but this one makes me doubt, since, if [specific person] believes the threat, it effectively removes choice from him, and turns him from an ethical being into an instrument of murder. This means that the choice, and hence responsibility, is shifted from [specific person] to the person who made the threat. This is different from the 200 Bitcoin example, because that would still leave choice to [specific person].

So, saying the above is, IMHO, an attempt of murder, using [specific person] as an instrument of murder. If [specific person] actually kills a blue-eyed person, I think the punishment for the murder should be shared between the two. I haven't completely figured out how it should be shared: I think it all depends on the alternatives that are available to [specific person]: more choice means more responsibility. Those alternatives are not necessarily limited to what he has been told to do.

In an extreme case, the 200 Bitcoin example could be equivalent, e.g. if [specific person] needs those 200 Bitcoins to survive, and has no more ethical means of obtaining them. I assumed this was not the case.

Person A: "I will give 200 BTC to anyone who kills blue eyed people"
Person B kills 5 blue eyed people.
Person B: "OK. Done. Now give me the BTC"
Person A: "No, sorry. Obviously it was only a joke."

That's the reason why Person A should be punished. Obvious jokes are not alyways obvious.

WTF kind of neighborhood do you live in?

Of course they can. For example, the statements were made in the formulation of this poll, yet no-one thinks the pollster was trying to form a contract.

You can go to any pub in my city on a Friday or Saturday night, and you will hear statements such as these, and it's obvious that it's rhetoric rather than an offer to contract.

OK, here's the question.
Which of the following statements do you believe is the limit at which should not be punishable by the state? By expressing a limit, it's not a false dichotomy of an all or nothing choice. For instance, I don't have a problem with someone singing a song that "I hate ****." Hate is as meaningless word anyway. If I said I hate blue eyes, that would not make a good argument, so I don't say such things. If someone does say that, I would be willing to listen to their argument why they would say such a thing before judging (and probably laughing at) them. I will not tolerate anyone advocating to murder without presenting an argument of threat. If someone does say that, I will listen to their reasoning to see if there is a legitimate threat, but if not, then corrections are in order. If someone calls to action without going through that process, then they themselves are a threat and should be sanctioned. The OP is a slippery slope. The OP is obviously promoting the notion that running your mouth off is considered free speech. In the words of Harlan Ellison, "Everybody has opinions: I have them, you have them. And we are all told from the moment we open our eyes, that everyone is entitled to his or her opinion. Well, that’s horsepuckey, of course. We are not entitled to our opinions; we are entitled to our informed opinions. Without research, without background, without understanding, it’s nothing. It’s just bibble-babble. It’s like a fart in a wind tunnel, folks."

Just because death threats are banned those not mean you have to hunt down everyone making threats over the internet ..
But too allow someone to yell out at a marked place: "I offer 200 bitcoin for each blue eyed person you kill. Contact me for your payment pluss proof."  I just don't see how that is "free speech".

I think maybe english isn't your first language? That is what the original question asked (besides "the state" part).

I'm not sure how you say no serious ethics discussion would include this question when it's meaning was interpreted by the majority of people to be exactly what you proposed. There was just a miscommunication between the OP and you due to the (apparently) ambiguous wording.

These are contracts. Words can be contracts, recorded, and be judged by your peers. This poll is meaningless. I offered a fix that would make it somewhat useful, but was ignored. I think most people will refuse to accept this poll as it is so full of fallacies, it's utterly ridiculous and would be dismissed by any serious ethics discussion.

You seemed to be framing it using legal terms (specific intent, conspiracy to murder). But yea, all laws will have unintended consequences. Just because you don't think anyone should be allowed to do something doesn't mean you need to think there should be a law against it.

It is easy to forget that laws are often later used for reasons beyond the scope of their original purpose. I think it is important to include this "misuse" factor when determining what laws should or shouldn't be on the books. Not to mention the possible waste of resources in tracking down every asshole who threatens someone on the internet. Law is not morality.

I see what you mean westkybitcoins.

Sorry for spoiling your poll by intentionally ticking the wrong box. 

It's very different. In your example we're probably talking about a contractual undertaking rather than "speech".

OK with, no. Think it's not automatically a crime, correct.

The 13.3% choice, as I said, is disturbing, in part because of the trickiness of it. If it's something said by a mafia boss to one of his hitmen, then the implications are much different (i.e., criminal at that point) than if it's something some frustrated racist says to a friend to see what the reaction is (and I don't know where you live, but from my perspective, criminalizing that speech outright in some parts of the US will only lead to a lot of wasted resources, good intentions aside.)

If I heard someone say that, I'd immediately try to determine how much of it was a jest. Even as a 4chan-level childish "joke" it warrants a response, but if the person is serious (but has no power to compel or attempt to incentivize [specific person] and no ability to profit) then some more serious non-violent action is warranted.

I totally get someone thinking that the statement should warrant a potentially violent response on its own. I just think it's too much of a grey area to ban the speech itself as speech; the repercussions of the banning would be worse than the speech itself would tend to be.