because calling out nazis as liars about their interest in free speech has got to mean abandoning freedom of speech.

No duh insincere people claiming to advocate for free speech don’t really mean it. This isn’t exactly new or debatable: what is argued with it is debatable.

Earlier, you write about “statements nearly impossible to implement” & looking for “solutions” as if free speech needs solving. It doesn’t. Free speech is its own solution: it means free for speech you dislike and for speech to answer it. There’s nothing to solve but a lack of dedication to & endurance of free speech.

application of ethical principles may change

this is a nice summary statement here.

Not to be lifted out of context, “people’s awareness & recognition of” is an important part of that quote.

It doesn’t mean their application to the same circumstances changes. What changes is people’s awareness/recognition, not that it applies or how (it always applied the moment it was possible to apply). Like finally recognizing equal rights apply to women or minorities. Or that protesting topless is protected speech. Or that free speech applies to communication over new technologies.

If you got that, though, then it’s a nice summary.

Technologies

yes

and ethics continuously change

no

and adapt to new technologies

Yes. Technology may change, people’s awareness & recognition of the application of ethical principles may change, however that doesn’t mean the principles themselves change.

In terms of ethical reasoning, the essence of a matter may remain the same regardless of superficial guises (like technology). Adapting to a technology means applying the same general principles to novel, special cases. The principles concern rights & moral obligations people have to each other. Technology isn’t essential or relevant: the use of technology to perform an action is irrelevant to whether that action is right or wrong. The principles themselves can be timeless, immutable, and concern only essentials necessary to evaluate actions. Thinking otherwise indicates confusion & someone who doesn’t know what they’re talking about.

I’m not interested in discussing the analogies of going from codexes to printed books vs. going from printed hard copies to human-human interactions being hijacked by human-passing bots, because to me these are evidently not comparable.

Well, you’re wrong. They’re ultimately ways of disseminating expression. Just because you think some shiny, new, whizzy bang doodad fundamentally changes everything doesn’t mean it does.

It probably indicates lack of historical perspective. These problems you think are new aren’t. People have long been complaining about lies spreading faster than truth, the public being disinformed & easily manipulated. In the previous century, the US has been through worse with disfranchisement, Jim Crow, internment camps, violent white supremacy, the red scare, McCarthyism. Yet now contagious stupidity spread through automations is an unprecedented threat unlike the contagious stupidity of the past? Large scale stupidity isn’t new. Freedom of speech was essential to anti-authoritarian, civil rights, and counterculture movements.

There’s something contradictory about trying to defend liberal society by surrendering a critical part of it.

The fact that this discussion is taking place on Lemmy and not Xitter tells plenty about the actual complexities of this story.

Not really. Decentralization is part of the solution.

Some people never liked Twitter.

Claim it, twist it, poison it, ruin it.

Nothing new historically. You don’t have to accept their false premises by surrendering ideas to them.

things people used to care about or that used to be innocuous

Free speech is power, not innocuous: authorities fear it. It belongs to the people unless they surrender it.

Used to care about? Only if you let them stop you.

That’s just technology & fearmongering. Socrates was critical of writing out of concerns it would deteriorate minds & make superficial thinkers. Critics were concerned the printing press would lead to widespread moral degradation with the abundance of low-quality literature. People criticized television & media for brain rot.

Guess what you’re the next iteration of?

Technologies change, yet good principles hold regardless.

You know what you can do with free speech? More free speech. No one has a monopoly on LLM, bots, or algorithms. If people were inclined, they could launch these technologies to counter messages they oppose. People can choose to tune out & disregard expressions. Much more can be done with free speech.

Does anyone?

Yes, old-school liberals, the ACLU, etc.

It’s bizarre & disappointing that newer generations seem to associate freedom of speech with right-wing authoritarians when freedom of speech has been a firmly liberal value advanced through the enlightenment & civil rights movement. Everyone ought to defend it.

The point of my post is that some of the loudest proponents of free speech have ulterior motives.

So what? Free speech is still right: everyone should fervently defend it. Whether they’re sincere about it or not, free speech is indispensable to a liberal democracy.

The problem isn’t free speech. The problem is people who want to take it all away. If you fall into the trap of abandoning basic values from the enlightenment when they make it inconvenient, then you play into their game & help them set back society.

The guy who said he’d build a wall & Mexico would pay for it doesn’t know why he started a trade war?

That’s a shock.

Not saying you should. The fact remains, though, you’re already investing it in real estate in an all-eggs-in-one-basket situation, inflation & property taxes are real, and insurance costs. Real estate still has some risk compared to low-risk assets that appreciate: do you remember any recent real estate crashes?

Investment accounts are generally insured (against things going missing) up to high limits, and you can split them up to fit in those limits.

If it all goes to shit, practically none of it will be worth much anyway. If armageddon doesn’t come to pass, you’ll be stuck with some property, livestock, crops, so not all bad.

Tax-free growth at compounding interest, beating inflation, diversification to mitigate risk & lessen volatility (eg, not putting eggs all in 1 basket). Markets always have risk: if you’re really afraid of risk, you can shift to mostly low-risk types of investments (bonds, money market, cash equivalents, etc). Real estate is typically considered riskier.

Retirement isn’t necessary: qualified distributions (no tax penalty) only require reaching a certain age or any of the many exceptions (including terminal illness). Early distribution with tax penalty is always possible.

It’s all basic information a certified financial planner or advisor or some articles on the internet can tell you.

Wouldn’t it be easier to disrupt the system by—I don’t know—something old & boring like asking everyone to clean out/close their bank accounts at the same time to cause a run on banks?

Where do people come up with these weaker ideas? Trump’s inanity might disrupt the economy more than these efforts.

Not Nigerian enough.

‘illegal protests’

Then they’re safe, since protests are legal.

From the description

First published in 1971, Rules for Radicals is Saul Alinsky’s impassioned counsel to young radicals on how to effect constructive social change and know the difference between being a realistic radical and being a rhetorical one. […] Alinsky was able to combine, both in his person and his writing, the intensity of political engagement with an absolute insistence on rational political discourse and adherence to the American democratic tradition.

In today’s social climate with today’s regard for rational discourse & democratic tradition? Are we doomed?

SSA publishes some cool solvency estimates for proposed policy changes. It looks like for payroll taxes, though eliminating the taxable maximum helps, some payroll tax rate increase is needed to sustain it long-term.

I remember the full-length report on this some months ago. Shit’s legit.

I think even if there’s no absolute “intrinsic” meaning, with sufficient cultural use, that negative meaning is impossible to extricate from an unironic, active use of the word.

I’m not sure of a succinct way to say that, so I see why intrinsic may have felt right. Maybe firmly established meaning?

I think it’s a little academic to say “any offensive word” can be said in an “inoffensive manner”

Technically correct best kind of correct? 😄

I point it out because some people get carried away with bizarrely simplistic claims that make the rest of their argument hard to follow. The best way to interpret their argument is unclear.

we’d then need to debate what it means to “use” a word in an offensive context versus another

I think it could suffice to state it was used in a conventional sense as an insult or to stir animosity. Musk clearly is using it in the conventional, offensive sense to outrage progressive & elicit right-wing support of outraging progressives: classic demagogy.

Back to your contention, yes, he’s using the firmly established meaning to offend & be bad, which bad people do. People criticize him to try to hold him accountable, which he is exploiting to advance his agenda.

While I can’t see the comment you’re responding to, I’m going to guess it concerns the question why do words offend & do we need to let them offend us that much? You wrote

Nobody is making the word bad.

This is the crux of the matter. Conventions change, words change meaning. It’s not instant & uniform: various people influence & promote changes that not everyone agrees with, leading to contention. Some people do make words bad. This case had a campaign to do specifically that when the word was uncontroversial until then. People had to choose to make that word more offensive than it conventionally was, and not everyone was onboard with that with many still holding out.

To see that choice, consider the words idiot, imbecile, moron. These words had similar origins as technical designations for mental disabilities, they have similar meanings and serve the same role as insults that aren’t that offensive. The current meaning & usage crowded out the historical one enough that it’s effectively forgotten.

The word we’re discussing could have taken the same course & was on track to do that until some well-meaning activists intervened. What good does changing a word objectively do for the subjects they’re trying to support? If anything, it reinforces taboo. And it introduces a new, easy button to provoke moral outrage: if you don’t agree this word in particular is very offensive (unlike before), then you hate people with mental disabilities. Seems like a disservice.

This moralizing conflict over words gives demagogues easy ammo to exploit. Was there a better way to support people that doesn’t do that?

women being fucking horrible communicators

That goes for society in general & we can’t pin that on women. Look at autists try to navigate social situations to observe how complicated neurotypicals make something that could be straightforward. Simple, clear directness often takes boldness & isn’t typically rewarded. Learning not to give a fuck takes effort.

Women & people in general don’t know who they’re dealing with & don’t owe them much of anything.

That’s the good ol’ euphemism cycle/treadmill. Linguists have long observed a process of semantic shift, often pejoration, for words of taboo subjects.

Words idiot, imbecile, moron were technical designations that became offensive yet somehow later softened into acceptable insults.

Words colored people, negro, black went through the euphemism cycle. At some point black was reclaimed & became acceptable. Now people are afraid to say it again.

VD became STD and now it’s STI. I still don’t know what was wrong with STD.

This phenomenon reflects society’s avoidance of uncomfortable ideas by shifting words. The words change, though it’s questionable they objectively change society’s discomfort toward the subjects. The phenomenon might be reasonably criticized as ineffective & distracting.

Can you guess what will happen to today’s euphemisms?

The word is intrinsically bad

While I agree words can offend, I challenge your understanding of linguistics: no word is intrinsically bad. They’re signs & symbols with arbitrary, often conventional meaning.

Usage & context matter. Take any euphemism & say it in a hateful manner: now it’s offensive. Lifewise, take any offensive word & speak of it in an inoffensive manner: not offensive. Language is flexible.

Saying the word is not the same thing as using it. It’s not like the N word that way.

Explain the logic for not quoting an offensive word?

Taboos are weird.