>If you cannot censor away opinions, if suppression of ideas doesn't work then why in exactly these kinds of articles do people bemoan it as dangerous?
Because the process itself involves heaping lots of social costs on people in the attempt to hurt their narratives, and that normally we would consider this bad? I mean, if we concede that literally throwing people in prison is ineffective then shouldn't the argument for not throwing people in prison be obvious?
> Because the process itself involves heaping lots of social costs on people
I'm open to that argument. But I think this writer is really trying to have it both ways. They literally say, censorship doesn't work and we shouldn't do it because we are the ones who will be censored. It just seems like a kitchen sink argument. Either it is dangerous to society because it works or it is dangerous to a few because it is unjustly punitive.
I am not fully in agreement with what is happening right now because I believe it is fundamentally immoral to force someone into a society where they must provide for themselves and then to take away their means of provision.
But I also see our society as deeply censoros before this and a lot of people who are very upset now were fully willing to ignore that as long as it didn't broach opinions they value. Two wrongs don't make a right but it does leave me a little suspicious of how genuine they are and how magnanimous they will be when the pendulum of discourse swings back in their favor.
Because the process itself involves heaping lots of social costs on people in the attempt to hurt their narratives, and that normally we would consider this bad? I mean, if we concede that literally throwing people in prison is ineffective then shouldn't the argument for not throwing people in prison be obvious?