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Re:My Free Speech Means You Have to Shut Up by bbarnett on Wednesday November 22, 2023 @08:19AM (#38378751)
Realistically, I think you're more hitting up on how to convey, than what the actual is. Probably this should be more dynamic, where different audiences receive the same, but differently phrased message.

Here's an example. Discrimination. Here's a factual phrase: women are less intelligent than men. That's not discriminatory, what is discriminatory, is if I use a minor deviation in averages, to look at $random_woman, and presume she is less intelligent than $random_man.

For example, there are many women that are more intelligent than many men.

My point is, we've had to "dumb down" discrimination, by trying to claim, in many respects, there there is absolutely no difference between men and women. This has led to detrimental outcomes for women, a key example being that as most medical volunteers are men, many models of the brain are predicated upon the male, and therefore? As people say "why, there's no difference between the male and female brain!", it has actually harmed women's outcomes.

I am concerned about the parallel here. That the more we lump things into mega-categories, the more positive outcomes for nuanced groups is lost. And that means that the best solutions may be unavailable, for if they cannot be applied to "overall group", then they may be deemed useless.

I know you're not advocating any of this. And I know your goal is to just ensure people fully understand the risks.

But my point is, much as the fight against discrimination has been whittled down to "there is no difference!", because the stupids cannot understand nuance, you seem to be in a trap of having to whittle down to no-nuance, for the same reasons.

Which is sad.

Re:My Free Speech Means You Have to Shut Up by mindslight on Thursday November 23, 2023 @10:09PM (#38400305)
I'd say the problematic dynamic with assertions like "there is absolutely no difference between men and women" is that they terminate a chain of thought, and then get used as a lemma in support of a conclusion. They're held in place by social consensus [0] rather than a lack of nuance.

Hypothetically I can see this happening with my argument, but I'm only imagining more checked-out cynicism. Maybe you see how it's poised for something worse?

What I do commonly see are arguments in the vein of "it's impossible for a company to be coercive", which I'd say is the same exact dogmatic pattern you're describing. They're used to justify a state of affairs, and then offer a fallacious solution like "go start your own company". The wishful thinking here seems to be based on emphasizing the distinction between corporate power and government power [1], which is why I think it's useful to point out the commonalities.

[0] like only now that the mobs have passed, can you use this spicy but technically correct example

[1] see the common trope of people asserting that freedom of speech only pertains to the government, when it's just a general concept and the government-specific bit is the legal framing of the first amendment