Re:Letter regarding proposed free expression statement from MIT
by dagmx on Monday December 26, 2022 @02:52AM
(#34135656)
That’s fair, and yeah very good points. Certainly, even in my lifetime, democracy has led to subjugation of minorities.
I guess that goes back to my initial premise that “free speech” and “free expression” are poor descriptors, though I’m not sure what better ones would be.
People end up colloquially conflating them with absolute freedom , when outside of libertarians, most societies have rules around it.
I generally feel like codes of conduct are better than using terms like “free”. They denote nuance while allowing flexibility of the guidelines.
I'd argue it gets worse the larger the group. Its very hard to change the direction of a large group because of inertia. Libertarianism has been around a while, but struggles to get traction when pitted against the established norms. Even if individuals are convinced, it's hard to convert enough individuals to matter.
>> or if everyone is subject matter experts
Again, a small group of experts doesn't necessarily create concensus. We saw that during the pandemic where each country, guided by experts, had such a variety of responses. Lock-out (new Zealand), lock down (China), carry on (Sweden), and innumerable random configurations (USA) all lead to different outcomes. Or did they? Sociologists will be dining out on this for decades.
Most functional democracies (I'm thinking company boards, member based clubs etc) understand nuance, and letting everyone win a bit, while finding compromises between majorities and minorities.
The explosion of insanity though (think QAnon) makes a mockery of the democratic process, and exposes the root flaw of group-think. What if the majority think Tom Hanks drinks the blood of sacrificed babies - what price democracy then?