I wished the ideal of free speech would include the ideal of being open to discussion (perhaps even the scientific method). I think many movements fail in that regard, for example it was pretty much impossible to have reasonable discussions with FPH subscribers. You were immediately downvoted when you tried to argue against it. If people are completely ignorant towards alternative, consistent points of view, they don't deserve to be listened to.

Forcing people to listen, act in certain ways or to follow specific practices is basically the opposite of freedom.

Saying that people should be open to your arguments privileges those ideas you yourself hold. How do you tell which arguments get such treatment?

It wouldn't be the opposite of freedom (that would be suppression), but definitely a limit to the freedom we currently have in certain regards. However, we already have formal and informal rules that restrict the actions of people and forces them to follow specific practices, so it wouldn't be entirely new. In fact it would probably improve the situations at both extremes: on the one hand some taboos would be revoked (as that's also a way to avoid discussion), and you could exclude crazy and confused people who don't partake in any actual discourse.

I didn't say at all people should be open to my particular arguments, but to arguments in general.

> I didn't say at all people should be open to my particular arguments, but to arguments in general.

If it's arguments in general,

* you can't hang up on salesmen,

* you can't kick 911 conspirators off your unrelated forum,

* you can't remove most trolls,

* you can't ban homeopathy threads from /r/science,

* etc.

In general, you lose the ability to moderate conversations in spaces you own, or decide what you spend your time doing. This is, to be honest, a pretty extreme idea if taken literally.

Or you could deem salesmen, 911 conspirators, trolls and homeopathy proponents as "crazy and confused", but who decides that? How is that any more unwanted than posting critical meta commentary to /r/fatpeoplehate?

You are confusing an implication for an equivalence. I've said that those who are not open to arguments should not have a voice. From that it doesn't follow that those who argue should always be listened to.

I imagine a concrete implementation of this idea as a meme that people themselves would recognize this as a good rule and that they would consider it as a decision aid whether or not to participate in a certain group.

You're effectively just juggling the same argument. If I'm to hang up on salesmen, then I'm not open to arguments. Thus you claim I should not have a voice.

Oh, you mean it that way. Anyway, I’ve already said that it should rather applied to large movements instead of interactions of individuals. The current ideal of free speech can’t possibly realized to its fullest extent either/anyway.

It's really not uncommon for hateful children to have thin skin.

>It's meant to protect speech which the politically powerful find objectionable. It's not about protecting abuse, but protecting ideas.

The loophole, then, is to define ideas the politically powerful find objectionable as abuse.

I think the point is that protecting abuse is a necessary but unwanted side-effect, not that it shouldn't be protected. This matters because it helps distinguish when such freedoms need to be applied (eg. in government, not my back yard) and how it should be applied.