Not only that, the necessary resolution to the paradox is inherently narrow.
Suppose you have some fools who assert that their opponents' ideas are too dangerous to be heard and have to be censored. Actually doing this is itself too dangerous to allow because once the censorship is in place it would be used to quash dissent and suppress the truth and people would be punished for challenging the prevailing dogma, even when they're right.
But to prevent the harm you don't need a system to prevent people from proposing the harm, you need a system to prevent them from enacting it. It doesn't require censorship, it requires a robust system of checks and balances for protecting fundamental rights, so that the people who propose censorship or violence are thoroughly incapable of bringing them about.
I totally agree. The problem is that we don't have such a system, and as a result, the proposition of harm is in itself already a credible threat and therefore harmful. Personally speaking, to reduce that harm, there's not a lot I can do to make these propositions less credible, so I'm left with trying to give these threats less of a platform.
I will note that from my perspective it is a logical conclusion that the insufficient policing and regulation of violence (and tools of violence) in the US in particular is directly detrimental to the expression of free speech.
> The problem is that we don't have such a system, and as a result, the proposition of harm is in itself already a credible threat and therefore harmful.
But we also don't really have an airtight system for censoring people we don't like, and we certainly shouldn't build one.
When you have to make a change from the status quo to get what you want, make the good change, not the ugly hack someone is promptly going to use against you as soon as you turn your back.
> I will note that from my perspective it is a logical conclusion that the insufficient policing and regulation of violence (and tools of violence) in the US in particular is directly detrimental to the expression of free speech.
Eh. "Tools of violence" are largely a red herring. The tool of violence for a lynch mob is rope. The most common tool of violence for acts of terrorism is explosives, which can be made from the stuff in the average garage or kitchen. You don't get there by banning rope or cooking oil, you get there by deterring would-be murderers with the threat of prosecution.
Notice the circumstances under which these things happen. The first is when the government isn't prosecuting the offenders for acts of violence, e.g. the KKK in its heyday. The second is when the offenders are zealots or otherwise mentally ill and thereby undeterrable, e.g. religious terrorism or lone wolf mass murderers. The first, then, is easy; you prosecute them and they're deterred.
The second is extremely difficult to eliminate, because what are you going to do, institute a police state? Try to restrict access to elements necessary for human life because a chemist could make them into a weapon? But it's also rare. It's not the real problem.
The real problems, in terms of fatalities, don't work anything like most people think they do. The large majority of firearms fatalities in the US are suicides and accidents. Then the people who use a partisan frame or think every problem looks like a nail will still argue that you could get somewhere by banning guns, but since that doesn't pass, a realist might want to direct their efforts to things like improving mental health services or subsidizing gun safes.
But then we're into politics. If you subsidize gun safes or similar and that actually reduces the number of kids playing with daddy's guns, you can't run on fixing it anymore. "Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution."
Suppose you have some fools who assert that their opponents' ideas are too dangerous to be heard and have to be censored. Actually doing this is itself too dangerous to allow because once the censorship is in place it would be used to quash dissent and suppress the truth and people would be punished for challenging the prevailing dogma, even when they're right.
But to prevent the harm you don't need a system to prevent people from proposing the harm, you need a system to prevent them from enacting it. It doesn't require censorship, it requires a robust system of checks and balances for protecting fundamental rights, so that the people who propose censorship or violence are thoroughly incapable of bringing them about.