Posts by giovanni tiso
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Hard News: How much speech does it take?, in reply to Islander,
O, may I add? – suicide was not looked upon as shameful in the times gone by. It was accepted that the suicidal person found something too much for them to bear. In the case of the’ seaweed caps’ (widows or survivors of a long partnership) it was also honoured.
Whereas Christians used to treat it the way Flavell advocates, until well into the 20th century in some places. And so suicides were buried on unconsecrated land, alongside unbaptised children and unmarried women who had died of childbirth. To teach them all a lesson, presumably.
Good old Western values. We have so much to teach.
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Hard News: How much speech does it take?, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
I use my real name because I think there’s something in the old saw that if you won’t spit in someone’s face you shouldn’t piss on their back. I can be nasty – and God, have I ever gotten the wrong end of the stick and worked it like a stripper pole more often than I care to admit. But I’ll own what I say on-line, just as I don’t shove anonymous letters through letterboxes in the middle of the night. Always.
Good for you. But you know, we are not all built the same way. And for every two verbose egomaniacs (that would be you and I) there are five people for whom being identifiable in RL is a little more fraught, for a variety of reasons – not all of them to do with personal safety – or for whom pseudonymity can be empowering, again, for a variety of reasons.
Also: the fact that the Internet is so thoroughly archived and searchable is not necessary for online discussion forums to function, and I get that people may want to speak their mind and yet not have the internet keep a thorough running tally of their opinions, with all that that implies.
But more generally, our online identities and our real life identities are two quite separate things, and are constructed in quite different ways. Some people choose to acknowledge that by using a handle. To me, that’s absolutely fine, so long as that handle is consistent – like Emma says. Because if it is, over time people are going to worry about the reputation of their handle (and the consistency of the behaviour and the ideas associated with it) as much as they do about the their real name. As Islander and webweaver have just nicely pointed out.
Either way, we’re not getting rid of trolls. The same thing that makes some people feel that they can speak more freely online is the one that makes others feel that they can liberate their inner arsehole. We just have to live with that, and build online communities that can cope with the arseholes.
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Hard News: Science: it's complicated, in reply to Stephen Judd,
Thus I once attended a talk given by a Herr Professor Doktor Doktor X
You really must stop frequenting supervillains.
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Just reading the article on Breivik quoting from the Windschuttle paper delivered in New Zealand. This bit stood out:
"The concepts of free enquiry and free expression and the right to criticise entrenched beliefs are things we take so much for granted they are almost part of the air we breathe," he quoted from the paper. "We need to recognise them as distinctly Western phenomena. They were never produced by Confucian or Hindu culture."
Without this concept there would have been no Copernicus, Galileo, Newton or Darwin.
Does this guy (I mean Windschuttle) realise that Copernicus and Galileo were a product of Catholic Europe, whose commitment to free expression was such that the former was always too afraid to publish and the latter was threatened with being burned at the stake if he didn't recant his theories? Or has he read the first thing into the reception of Darwin's theories, and the degree of enmity that they still produce amongst the very people who are most attached to the idea of Western exceptionalism?
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Hard News: Science: it's complicated, in reply to Kracklite,
Prof The Lord
Great name for a hip hop artist.
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Hard News: How much speech does it take?, in reply to Emma Hart,
- it’s way more important that it be available to protect victims of domestic violence, rape victims, kinky people, sex workers – people who are vulnerable
Whenever the issue of pseudonymity comes up, I remind myself that I am privileged to be able to use my real name online.
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Hard News: How much speech does it take?, in reply to Russell Brown,
Frankly, calling me a Marxist is an insult to … well, Giovanni for a start.
If you put four Marxists in a room they’re likely to give you three different versions of what being a Marxist means, and that’s just because one of them happens to be bound and gagged.
So I think it pays to maintain a relaxed attitude on the whole naming thing, is what I’m saying.
However this post by Scott Hamilton on what Kiwiblog commenters understand to be Marxism is still a good read.
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Hard News: How much speech does it take?, in reply to Kracklite,
Kiwibog may be a sewer and The Standard merely a gutter in comparisson, but I don’t care to walk in either.
In a nutshell.
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Hard News: How much speech does it take?, in reply to MikeE,
Free speech does not imply an obligation to publish or promote… Far better that these racist idiots be out in the open than underground.
Unless it builds a tolerance. I think you could point to the toxic public discourse in the United States as a significant problem. There is a lot to be said for not allowing for certain things to be said, or for certain language to be accepted as part of the mainstream. Which generally doesn't involve making speech illegal, but enforcing and policing voluntary standards, and shaming the transgressors. In New Zealand we have Michael Laws and Kiwiblog commenters, but in most mainstream media spaces you just can't get away with anything remotely as vile (eh, Paul Henry?).
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Hard News: How much speech does it take?, in reply to Tristan,
I think free speech is a fundamental right and that the best thing about free speech is it allows bigots to crawl out of their corners so we can shine the light on them and everyone can see them for what they are.
I get what you're saying but I still think that some people should be denied not so much the oxygen of publicity as the oxygen of oxygen.